Nigerian Journalist Philip Obaji Wins Allard Prize International Photography Contest

Nigerian journalist Philip Obaji is among five others across the world who have just been announced winners of the Allard Prize Photography Competition.

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 are the other winners of the bi-annual photography competition, which recognizes photographic excellence reflecting the ideals of the Allard Prize, which recognises an individual, movement or organization that has demonstrated exceptional courage and leadership in combating corruption or protecting human rights, especially through promoting transparency, accountability and the Rule of Law.

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.

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 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.