Fisayo Babatunde Soyombo is a multi-award winning Nigerian investigative journalist and a former pioneer and editor of Nigeria online newspaper, TheCable.
His professional media career began in 2004 when he started writing for The Guardian as a fresh student in the university. This has since become his practice for years with two years of transcontinental professional journalism career, spanning online spells with South African Network Africa; Minnesota, United States-based African Outlook; California, US-based THEWILL; and pan-African online business agency, VENTURES AFRICA.
Soyombo is one of Nigeria’s unknown but quietly emerging writing talents with intuitive investigating prowess. His burgeoning writing craft has won him three national writing contests; and has earned him more than 15 youth journalism-related awards.
In 2009, he was long-listed as one of the 200 winners of the World Bank Annual Global Youth Essay Contest, which featured 2, 469 entries. In 2010, he reprised the feat in a contest participated in by 2009 global applicants. An article written by him as a National Youth Service Corps member in 2011 fetched him a nomination for the Investigative Reporter category of the Nigeria Media Merit Awards 2011.
As a man who knows the onions of investigative journalism, he was named in the top three for the One World Media Award for the International Journalist of the year. In 2019, he won the People Journalism Prize for Africa (PJPA) for his undercover investigation into Nigeria’s Criminal Justice System. Also In 2016, he won the Free Press Unlimited Award as the Newcomer of the year.
He currently edits one of Nigeria’s leading online platform. An opinion contributor to Al Jazeera, his writings has been translated into German, French and Arabic.
He is the Chairman of the Board of Trustees of Onelife Initiative for Human Development. For his brand of investigative journalism, Soyombo’s most recent honors include: Winner, Maritime Economy category, African Media Initiative awards, Kenya (December 2016); Winner, Online category, Wole Soyinka Award for Investigative Reporting, Nigeria (December 2016); Winner, Nigerian Investigative Reporter of the Year, Wole Soyinka Award for Investigative Reporting (December 2016); Winner, Hans Verploeg Newcomer of the Year category, Free Press Awards, Netherlands (October 2016) and several others.
