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AGRICULTURE REPORTING Versatile reporter Emmanuel Mayah , Winner, AGRICULTURE REPORTING, at the 17th DAME Emmanuel Mayah, last year's winner in the Press Reporter of the category, is this year's winner in two categories; Agricultural Reporting and Health Reporting. In the Agricultural Reporting, one of the newly introduced categories, his entry, “Silkworm genocide”, was adjudged the best for its in-depth analysis on the dying Aso Oke industry, the once vibrant and popular textile tradition in the southern part of Nigeria. The report took Mayah to several places where the materials are made and discovered that if urgent steps are not taken genuine Aso Oke may be a thing of the past. The report, published in the Saturday Sun of January 20, 2007, revealed that what is being paraded as Aso Oke today in many places is not the genuine one but cotton cleverly mixed with foreign threads. The genuine ones, the story further reports, are scarce because the tree, Arere, from which the cocoon to make the materials is extracted, is virtually extinct partly because some people now see the tree as a delicacy, and party because it is ravaged by particular disease. His entry, “UCH: the drug revolving fraud”, won the Health Reporting of the Year. Published in the Saturday Sun of June 23, 2007, the story was about the alleged subversion of a federal government programme, the Drug Revolving Fund Scheme, in the University College Hospital (UCH). The story exposed the mismanagement of the fund by the leadership of the institution Born on December 14, 1971, Mayah studied Electrical Engineering at the Federal Polytechnic, Bida, where he was conferred with a Higher National Diploma. He began his journalism career at African Concord magazine. He has also worked at National Interest newspaper and later the Sun newspapers, where he is presently assistant editor, Investigation.