MTNN, Paykobo.com, others get FLEA Awards for growing Nigeria’s economy

Samuel Mobolaji

Various industry players have been encouraged to do more with Freelanews Leadership and Entrepreneurship (FLEA) Awards, due to their immense contributions to the development of the Nigerian economy.

The convener of the FLEA Conference and the founder of the Freelanews, Victor Ojelabi, said the awards were in a bid to encourage industry stakeholders to enable them to do more.

The maiden edition of the FLEA Conference and Awards, themed, “Visionary leadership: A panacea to Nigeria’s underdevelopment”, held on Tuesday at Radisson Blu, Ikeja, Lagos state.

Ojelabi explained that the FLEA Award is a platform set to encourage great leaders that invested and still investing in the growth of the country.

He noted that the idea behind the award is to set up a platform, to encourage and reward those who invested in this country.

According to him, when you invest in this country, you are making an impact on the Nigerians; we are going to reward you. So, the idea of the Flea award is the fact that if you employ like 500 Nigerians and your business has a projection of over 10 years, it is not like you wake up today and say I want to set up a business and let’s see how it’s going to run for like 6months or a year, that will not make an impact in the community.

“If you have a projection like this business am setting up is for 10 years, unless you’re always going to run for like six months, or one year, you understand that it will not make any impact in the community. What if you have a projection like, Okay, this business, I’m setting up certain for 10 years, do you understand so you will actually make an impact in the community you are setting it up.

“And if I do that, and other people do that, I can tell you that the country will be better with it or we may not even depend on our government to do stuff for us. So, that is the idea behind this award.”

Speaking on what the news platform stands for, he said: “Freelanews is a general news platform that is only based on the truth; you can’t see any news on the platform that is not verified.

“We decided to come up with something that is different, that is useful, and then that gives us freelanews and then the flea award is what actually gives us Freela News Leadership and Entrepreneurship award which is an acronym FLEA awards,” he said.

This is the maiden edition of the flea award. Now, we have been running freela news for the past three. It is both online and we have a special edition for the prints

Meanwhile, the panel session of the event discussed two major sub-topics which were: inspiring the future through quality visionary and influential leadership and innovation-driven policymaking in the digital age.

Words of the panellists at the event were all centred on making Nigeria a better place for all, problems and challenges of leaders and followers, and lastly Entrepreneurship in the digital age.

“You must not own an office to create an impact and power is a game: if you want power, you don’t need to sit in your house but fight for it, these were the words from a panellist during the conference session.

The 2021 FLEA awardees include MTN Foundation; Dr Adeshola Falaye, the Best Female Leader, paykobo.com, The Best Innovative Start-Up Brand, Mr Joshua Ajayi; The Most Courageous Focus People Builder, Mr Gbenga Daniel, the former Governor of Ogun state clicked Most Outstanding Leader, among many other organizations and individuals.