The International Public Relations Association (IPRA) has conferred 2018 Golden World Awards (GWA) on the President of FC Barcelona (colloquially known as Barça), Josep Maria Bartomeu and the founder of PRNigeria media platform, Yushau A. Shuaib.
The conferment took place on Friday at a ceremony by IPRA in Barcelona, Spain.
The Barca President received IPRA’s President Award for outstanding contribution of Barcelona Foundation to better world understanding through sports.
He was honoured for leading the club to put into practice values of teamwork, empathy, and respect while providing places for reflection and peaceful coexistence. The IPRA also recognised the foundation for its humanitarian assistance to refugees all over the world.
On his part, the Founder of PRNigeria, Yushau A. Shuaib received the Global PR Award for his book “Boko Haram Media War: An Encounter with the Spymaster.”
The book provides crisis communication strategies for counter-terrorism campaigns and highlights the accomplishments of the Nigeria military in tackling the menace.
He also received another award on Crisis Management for a campaign on Prison decongestion executed for the Nigerian Prison Service.
The PR Campaigns for two awards received by Nigeria at the event were executed by a leading PR firm in West Africa, Image Merchants Promotion Limited which was managed by Shuaib. The campaigns were executed during the sudden five-year retirement of Shuaib from the public service before his recent reinstatement by a court.
Since 2016, Image Merchants Promotion Limited has consistently won the IPRA awards, especially in Crisis Management Category. It was the only African PR agency to receive two awards at the 2018 International PR event in Barcelona.
Shuaib has led the PR firm in winning several regional and global awards since 2013 including African PR Excellence Awards in South-Africa, SABRE PR Awards by African Public Relations Association (APRA) in Morocco and Botswana and Golden World Awards in Qatar and Bulgaria among others.
Other top winners at 2018 PR Awards included in-house and PR Agencies from 30 countries across the continents, including Russia, Japan, Turkey, United States of America, United Kingdom, Spain, South Africa, The Netherland, United Arab Emirates, Austria, Indonesia, Republic of Germany, China, Argentina and Philippines.