‘Fisayo Soyombo, founder/editor-in-chief of the Foundation for Investigative Journalism (FIJ), has made the final list of journalists under consideration for the True Story Award in Switzerland.

Now in its fifth year, the award received 1,049 applications worldwide, from which a shortlist of 108 from across 12 different languages/regions was made in December.

The final 36 have now been announced from the 1,049 submissions from 102 countries, written in 25 different languages, with nine of them to be awarded in the categories research, storytelling and impact at a ceremony in Bern, Switzerland in June 2025.

“A total of 36 feature reports are nominated for the True Story Award 2025,” Daniel Puntas Bernet, curator, True Story Award, said in an announcement on Monday night.

“The wide variety of texts published between October 1, 2023 and September 30, 2024 reflect global current affairs, such as the ongoing war in Ukraine, the human trafficking in Africa and Asia, threats to journalists in Mexico and other countries or the search for new bacteria to fight the next pandemic.

“The nominated texts also shed a light on events such as the mass panic at the Haji to Mecca or evidence of strategic production of fake news in the Brazilian elections, and offer insights into mismanagment in large organizations such as the French Giant TotalEnergy, Amazon or the European Parliament.”

Puntas added: “The 36 nominees will be invited to the True Story Festival in Bern from June 20-22, 2025 where their work will be presented to the public at individual events in the centre of the Swiss capital.

“The three winning texts in the categories storytelling excellence, impact and relevance, and research intensity will be chosen by our main Jury and announced at the award’s ceremony on June 20.”

The three category winners will receive a prize of $20,000 each.

Soyombo got on the final list for getting himself trafficked to Burkina Faso to expose the luring of Nigerians to the landlocked West African country with the promise of dollar-paying jobs in companies that supposedly made gold, wristwatches and necklaces.

The investigation has saved scores of Nigerians from falling victim to traffickers. Five months after the story was published, it continues to help Nigerians evade the deceit of Burkina Faso human traffickers, the latest only last month.

READ MORE: From Nigeria to Burkina Faso: Undercover as a Trafficked Person

The True Story Award shortlist is the latest in Soyombo’s recognition-laden journalism career, following his emergence last year as a 2023-24 Knight-Wallace Fellow at the University of Michigan, United States.

In 2020, the former editor of TheCable, the International Centre for Investigative Reporting (ICIR) and SaharaReporters emerged one of the winners of the Karpoor Chandra Kulish International Award for Excellence in Journalism 2021 — 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.

The same year, he 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 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 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.

For his efforts in investigative journalism, the Nigerian state considers him an enemy and has detained him twice last year, with yet another expected to happen any moment from now.