NABJ Honors Ghanaian journalist Anas Aremeyaw Anas with Annual Percy Qoboza Award

WASHINGTON, DC (May 22, 2012) – The Board of Directors of the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) has selected Ghanaian journalist Anas Aremeyaw Anas for this year’s Percy Qoboza Award. The honor will be recognized during NABJ's 37th Annual Convention and Career Fair, the largest annual gathering of minority journalists in the country.

The Percy Qoboza award is named for the late editor of The World newspaper in Soweto, South Africa, whose powerful columns ranged from coverage of the 1976 Soweto Riots to the tragic horror of apartheid. Like Ooboza, Anas risks harm in pursuit of journalistic excellence and his efforts to be a voice for the voiceless. Anas was nominated by NABJ’s Global Journalism Task Force.

For more than a decade, the deputy editor of The New Crusading Guide has defied the trend of compliance and apathy among journalists in Ghana by conducting hidden-camera investigations, resulting in legal and criminal action against police, health officials, human traffickers and gangsters. One of his investigations led to the freedom of 17 Chinese sex workers in West Africa. He also exposed the infamous "Soldier Bar” brothel for teenagers, the criminally poor treatment of patients at the Accra Psychiatric Hospital and cocoa smuggling at the Ghana-Ivory Coast border.

In a congratulatory phone call with NABJ President Greg Lee, Anas said "Sometimes you sit on this continent and do think that nobody's looking. It is heartwarming that all dangers we go through to help impact on society is being recognized. I feel very proud receiving and honored receiving this. I can assure all of my readers and viewers that this award will not induce in me a sense of complacency."

Anas, whose nickname is "FBI," has received numerous awards for his investigative work both at home and abroad, though he avoids being photographed as part of the secret to his success.  On a trip to Ghana in July, 2009 U.S. President Barack Obama praised him for exposing the Chinese human-trafficking syndicate at the risk of his own life.

Anas continues to expose himself to great risk and has already been threatened and assaulted by police in the course of his work. He says he was even rendered impotent because of drugs administered to him during his investigation at the Accra Psychiatric Hospital.

It is Anas’ ability to produce groundbreaking work in the face of tremendous obstacles that truly makes him deserving of this year’s Percy Qoboza award.

An advocacy group established in 1975 in Washington, D.C., NABJ is the largest organization of journalists of color in the nation, and provides educational, career development and support to black journalists worldwide.

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