By Yemi Olakitan
In recognition of the outstanding achievements and contributions of Nnimmo Bassey, to the environment, the University of Michigan in the United States of America has announced Nigerian environmental leader, architect and poet, Nnimmo Bassey as the recipient of the prestigious 2024 Wallenberg Medal.
The Wallenberg Medal is awarded to outstandingtanding humanitarians whose dedicated efforts on behalf of the vulnerable and oppressed mirror the heroic commitment and sacrifice demonstrated by Raoul Wallenberg.
Wallenberg, a Swedish diplomat, saved tens of thousands of Jews in Budapest during the final months of World War II.
Previous recipients of the award include the 14th Dalai Lama, Romanian American Nobel Laurette and holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel; American politician and civil rights activist John Robert Lewis and Burmese Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, among others.
Bassey, the Executive Director of the Health of Mother Earth Foundation, will become the first Nigerian and the fifth African to receive such an honour, following in the footsteps of Helen Suzman and Archbishop Desmond Tutu from South Africa, Paul Rusesabagina from Rwanda, and Denis Mukwege from the Congo.
Bassey will receive the Wallenberg Medal as the 30th global recipient and deliver the Wallenberg Lect ure on September 10 in Ann Arbor City, Michigan.
The university, in a statement, said event details would be announced in the coming months.
Apart from being a director of the ecological think-tank and a multiple award winner, Bassey is also a member of the steering committee of Oilwatch International, a network resisting the expansion of fossil fuel extraction in the Global South.
He chaired Friends of the Earth International (2008-2012), was a co-recipient of the 2010 Right Livelihood Award, also known as the “Alternative Nobel Prize,” and received the Rafto Human Rights Prize in 2012.
Bassey received honorary doctorate degrees from the University of York (UK) in 2019 and from York University (Canada) in 2023. Bassey’s books include To Cook a Continent: Destructive Extraction and The Climate Crisis in Africa and Oil Politics: Echoes of Ecological War. His poetry collections include “We Thought It Was Oil But It Was Blood (1998), I Will Not Dance to Your Beat (2010), and I See the Invisible (2024).”
“As an architect, poet, writer, and human rights advocate, Nnimmo Bassey works to address root cause issues driving climate migration, environmental and social impacts of extractive production, and hunger in the Niger Delta.
“His commitment to socio-ecological justice connects large-scale issues of climate change, exploitation of natural resources, and political/corporate intransigence to the lives of individuals in the Niger Delta and beyond,” said Sioban Harlow, Professor Emerita of Epidemiology and Global Public Health and chair of the Wallenberg Medal Executive Committee.
“Just as Raoul Wallenberg trained as an architect at the Universitysity of Michigangan before bringing his multifaceted skills to humanitarian work, Bassey’s background as an architect undergirds his environmental leadership.”