Nchetachi Chukwuajah, a Senior Reporter with the Nigerian Tribune, has emerged as one of the 51 winners of the 2024 Covering Climate Now Journalism Awards.
Her story, titled, ‘Abused and Displaced: Women Farmers at the Centre of Herders’ Crisis,’ published on June 23, 2023, was selected as one of the three winning stories in the ‘Climate in Every Beat’ category.
A statement on Tuesday announcing the winners noted that the winning stories stood out of over 1,250 entries in 14 subject-based categories in addition to the Journalists of the Year, Emerging Journalists of the Year and Large Projects and Collaborations categories.
Commenting on the awards, CCNow co-founder and Executive Director of Strategic Initiatives, Kyle Pope, said: “Judges were astonished not just at the volume of stories but at their consistent quality. In every category, story after story was told with passion and care, informing audiences about the most important story of our time.”
Speaking on Nchetachi’s winning story, the organisers and judges stated: “This is how you draw the connection between a seemingly disparate social issue and climate change. With drought and desertification on the rise in much of Nigeria, itinerant cattle herders have been sent hunting for what few green pastures remain. The result has been a spate of violence between herders and Nigeria’s farmers — and for farmers who are women, this all too often led to instances of physical and sexual assault.
“Journalist Nchetachi Chukwuajah’s interviews with survivors spell out in harrowing detail how the impacts of climate change are often just the beginning of complex cause-and-effect chains that governments and societies are both unlikely to notice and ill-equipped to help.
“Chukwuajah’s story is “shocking,” judges said, and it performs an important service by shedding light on this double threat of the climate crisis and violence against women.”
For the winning story, Nchetachi travelled to Benue State in 2023 to report the experience of female farmers who suffered physical and sexual abuse from itinerant herders, who traverse their communities in search of pasture for their herd due to the changing climate, leaving destruction, abuse and displacement in their wake.
The story was executed as part of the UNESCO and CIJ London Climate Change in News Media project, facilitated by the Centre for Journalism Innovation and Development (CJID).
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