Call for Application: 2017 Wole Soyinka Award for Investigative Journalism

The Wole Soyinka Centre for Investigative Journalism is calling for applications for the 12th edition of Wole Soyinka Award for Investigative Reporting. Nigerian journalists or team of journalists, full or part-time, with stories published between 4th October 2016 and 3rd October 2017, can apply for opportunity.

This award seeks to honour journalism works from the print, online, photo, editorial cartoon, television, and radio categories in general. The submitted reports must involve in-depth coverage of clandestine activities on public and or corporate corruption, human rights abuses, or on regulatory failures in Nigeria.

In addition to the broad categories, WSCIJ in collaboration with Oxfam, an organisation dedicated to working to end the injustices that cause poverty, has included a special prize for reporting agriculture and food security in this year’s edition. The prize, which is part of a larger programme, will serve as an encouragement to reporters who are dedicated to reporting the focus area.

Received entries will be collated using the award coding system and assessed by a panel of media experts and related professionals with good understanding of investigative reporting. Judges would broadly score stories based on quality of investigation, evidence, human rights elements, ethical reportage, courage, individual creativity, public interest, impact and quality of presentation.

The deadline for the submission of applications is Tuesday, 24 October 2017 by 4pm. All entries, apart from the online categories which must be sent by email to [email protected], must be delivered to the Wole Soyinka Centre for Investigative Journalism office, Second Floor, No 18A Abiodun Sobajo Street, Off Lateef Jakande Street, Agidingbi, Ikeja, Lagos.

The full criteria for award is available on the organisation’s website – www.wscij.org.

ABOUT THE AWARD

The Wole Soyinka Award for Investigative Reporting was first held in October 2005 to encourage the development of an investigative tradition in the Nigerian media through rigorous scrutiny of human rights violations, regulatory failures and corruption in the public and corporate sectors of the nation’s life.

ABOUT THE CENTRE

The Wole Soyinka Centre for Investigative Journalism (WSCIJ) is a non-governmental organisation with a vision to stimulate the emergence of a socially just community defined by the ethics of inclusion, transparency and accountability through the mechanism of investigative journalism. The Centre is named after Professor Wole Soyinka in recognition of his life-long work in support of freedom of expression, freedom to hold an opinion, and freedom to impart them without fear or favour and without hindrance or interference. WSCIJ has held eleven annual editions of this award in investigative reporting and nine of its media lecture series among other capacity development initiatives for journalists since 2005.