‘Fisayo Soyombo, Founder/Editor-in-Chief of the Foundation for Investigative Journalism (FIJ), has emerged a 2022 fellow of the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism (RISJ) at the University of Oxford, United Kingdom — currently ranked first (for the sixth consecutive year) in the world in the Times Higher Education (THE) World University Rankings.

Soyombo, a former editor of TheCable, the International Centre for Investigative Reporting (ICIR) and SaharaReporters, joins 12 other fellows selected from around the world who will spend up to six months at the Reuters Institute, one of the world’s leading schemes for practising, mid-career journalists to take some time out from their day jobs to explore journalism in depth.

“I am pleased to inform you that you have been selected for a six month fellowship within the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at Oxford University,” Meera Selva, Director of the Journalism Fellowship Programme, said in a letter to fellows.

“The field was incredibly strong this year so congratulations on being chosen! We greatly look forward to welcoming you here in Oxford in the next academic year.”

During the fellowship, Soyombo will research “the rise of a willing army against the truth — the practice of drowning out a genuine work of journalism with coordinated media campaigns that confuse unsuspecting members of the public, consequently leaving the authenticity of the story in tatters”.

The Oxford fellowship is the latest in Soyombo’s recognition-laden journalism career and comes less than a year after he emerged one of the winners of the Karpoor Chandra Kulish International Award for Excellence in Journalism — for his 2019 undercover investigation on the failings of Nigeria’s criminal justice system, for which he got himself detained at a police cell for five days before spending another eight in prison after he had been arraigned in court.

In 2021, Soyombo was a finalist in One World Media’s International Journalist of the Year award, the second time in a row he had made the OWM shortlist, having been long-listed for the award in 2020 before going on to earn a place on the three-man shortlist.

Three months earlier, he had won the second prize in the Outstanding Investigation category of the Fetisov Journalism Award, described by organisers as “the most lucrative journalism award in history”.

In December 2020, Soyombo had also won the Local Reporter category of the 2020 Kurt Schork Awards in International Journalism. Before that feat, it was the third time in six years, the others being 2014 and 2016, that he had been short-listed for the Kurt Schork awards, which recognise “excellence in courageous reporting of conflict, corruption, human rights transgressions and other related issues”.

In 2020 alone, Soyombo either won or was short-listed for the Fetisov Journalism Awards (Outstanding Investigation category), the West Africa Media Excellence Award (Investigative Reporting category), the WJP Anthony Lewis Prize for Exceptional Rule of Law Journalism, the One World Media Awards (International Journalist of the Year category) and the People Journalism Prize for Africa (PJPA).

His 2016 honours include African Media Initiative awards, Maritime Economy category (winner); Wole Soyinka Award for Investigative Reporting, Online category (second runner-up); Wole Soyinka Award for Investigative Reporting, Online category (winner); Wole Soyinka Award for Investigative Reporting, the Nigerian Investigative Journalist of the Year, (winner); Diamond Award for Media Excellence (DAME), Investigative Reporter of the Year (runner-up); Free Press Awards, Hans Verploeg Newcomer of the Year category (winner);and the PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) Journalism Excellence Awards, Journalist of the Year, Business and Economy Reporting, (winner).

A three-time winner of the Wole Soyinka Award for Investigative Reporting, Soyombo founded FIJ in late 2020 as an independent, not-for-profit organisation that combats injustice, holds power to account and speaks for the voiceless, seeking to uncover the truth by bypassing officialdom and neutralizing propaganda. The outfit started publishing on January 20, 2021.