Nigerian Journalist Wins "Best Tourism Promoter" Award

Pelu Awofeso

Travel journalist and author Pelu Awofeso has been named the “Best Tourism Promoter” at this year’s MBE Improver Awards, which held in Manchester on 23 August 2014.

According to the organisers, the Awards are hosted “to acknowledge, celebrate and confer excellence on individuals who devoted their all in promoting human welfare and advancing reforms in their specific fields". Other categories at the awards include: outstanding leadership awards, volunteer recognition awards, best human rights activist, best community leader, best journalist and best entertainer.

Nominations were announced for 16 different categories in June and winners emerged based on voting by the public on the organiser’s website. “I am extremely honoured by this award, coming as it is when the international community prepares to mark the World Tourism Day on 27 September,” an elated Awofeso says. “I want you to know that this award will only spur me on to continue to do what I have been doing in the past 15 years--promoting domestic tourism in every way possible, online and offline.”

Awofeso is a recent winner of the CNN/ Multichoice Africa Journalist Awards in the tourism category and his career in journalism has spanned 12 years. He is the author of three travel books on Nigeria and he currently edits waka-about, a tourism- and arts-focused periodical.

 

“It's been a long, tough and almost tiring journey, but I will be the first to confess that my life has been thoroughly enriched by my adventures around Nigeria--from Argungu to Asaba--and the everyday Nigerians I have met on my way,” adds Awofeso, who has visited 30 states in Nigeria. “If there is anything I would like to say at this point, it will be to all Nigerians to take your own journeys; a great deal of memorable experiences await.”