Nigerian Journalist Philip Obaji Wins 2021 Allard Prize For International Photography Contest
Philip Obaji, a Nigerian born journalist is among five others across the world who have just been announced winners of the Allard Prize Photography Competition.
The Allard Prize Photography Competition is adjudicated by the Allard Prize Committee and Maxe Fisher, Associate Professor, Faculty of Design + Dynamic Media, Emily Carr University of Art + Design, Vancouver, Canada.
Other winners of the bi-annual photography competition are Aung Chan Tar from Myanmar; French photographer, Stéphane De Rouville; Spanish-born documentary photographer, Javier Clemente Martinez; Indonesian photojournalist, Bulbis Candra Ismet Bey; and British visual artist, Tom Law.
Obaji’s winning work is a photograph of a sobbing 17-year-old girl who fled the Boko Haram insurgency in the northeastern Nigeria town of Bama to an Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camp near Maiduguri only to be deceived, trafficked, and repeatedly raped by her traffickers.
The Allard award is Obaji’s second so far in 2021 having received the third prize in the Outstanding Contribution to Peace category at the Fetisov Journalism Awards held in Zurich, Switzerland, in April for his article that exposed how a human trafficker used Facebook to market child refugees from Cameroon living in Nigeria.
Philip Obaji Jr. (born 8 August 1985) is also an activist, and founder of 1 GAME: Football without violence.