Damilola Ayeni, the Editor of the Foundation for Investigative Journalism (FIJ), has been longlisted for the 2023 awards of the One World Media, an England-based media organisation celebrating under-reported stories from around the world.

For his story, “The Thing Inside Your Belly: A Woman’s 4-Year ‘Pregnancy’ Exposes a Crime Ring in Eastern Nigeria”, Damilola is on the longlist alongside eight other journalists from different newsrooms across the world.

He was longlisted under the International Journalist of the Year category, which recognises “a filmmaker or journalist working in any medium who has made the most outstanding contribution to international journalism during the past year”.

FIJ was also longlisted for the Special Awards category of this year’s One World Media Awards for providing an outlet for local people’s voices, creating spaces for critical information and holding those in power accountable.

Nigerian journalists Mayeni Jones and Yemisi Adegoke of the BBC made it to the Television Documentary Award and the Podcast & Radio Awards categories respectively, while Innocent Eteng of Prime Progress Media is on the Popular Feature category.

READ ALSO: FIJ Longlisted for One World Media’s Special Award — The 2nd Time in 2 Years

According to the organisers, the shortlist will be released in May, while the award ceremony will be held in June.

Damilola had exposed a group of people in the eastern part of Nigeria, who, claiming to be nurses and doctors, deceived childless women with fake pregnancies to defraud them.

Pretending to be fertility experts, members of the crime ring would inject and give their victims drugs to make their bellies protrude, damaging some of their vital body organs in the process.

Damilola visited some ‘cryptic’ pregnancy centres hidden from plain sight, from where these fake health practitioners were operating. His point of contact was Rose, a woman who believed she had been pregnant for four years.

READ ALSO: FIJ Selected for MDIF’s First Nigeria Media Innovation Programme

The editor was on the shortlist of the Thomson Foundation Young Journalists Award, environment category, in 2021.