The Wole Soyinka Centre for Investigative Journalism (WSCIJ) will on Wednesday, 24 September 2025 in Lagos, award and induct the 12 female reporters selected for the Champion Building edition who have successfully completed their investigative stories and leadership projects as members of the sixth cohort of the Report Women! Female Reporters Leadership Programme (FRLP) Fellowship.
Over the past months, the participants executed stories and delivered leadership projects that exposed systemic injustices against women and girls, interrogated harmful policies and practices, promoted accountability for the protection of women’s rights, and advanced gender-sensitive leadership within their newsrooms, all under the close guidance of their mentors, including Stella Din-Jacob, immediate past Director of News and Editor in Chief at TVC Communications; Idris Akinbajo, Managing Editor, Premium Times; Juliana Francis, Publisher, Security News Alert; and Motunrayo Alaka, Executive Director/CEO, WSCIJ.
The Report Women! programme, launched in 2014, has grown into a major platform for advancing gender parity in news content and newsroom leadership. Since 2017, when the Female Reporters Leadership Programme (FRLP) was introduced, 86 fellows have been inducted from five cohorts to take on newsroom leadership roles. So far, 537 reporters in Nigeria and Ghana have been trained, producing 136 investigative stories and 138 leadership projects, with 2,930 people directly benefiting from these interventions. The Centre has also published seven surveys and reports on women in the news and newsroom leadership, and in 2024 launched the Report Women! Experts Guide, which features over 500 female professionals across different sectors to support newsrooms in diversifying sources and amplifying women’s voices.
Through sustained mentoring and direct engagement with media leaders, the programme has contributed to the emergence of female editors, managers, and even board members in Nigerian media houses. It has also pressed newsroom executives to close the gap between equity and equality while demanding that the media hold other institutions accountable to guarantee human rights, fair representation, and good governance. Since 2021, the Gates Foundation has supported WSCIJ in delivering the Newsroom and News Engagement programme embedded within the ReportWomen! Initiative.
