The Board of Directors of the Wole Soyinka Centre for Investigative Journalism (WSCIJ) has announced the appointment of Mrs Motunrayo Alaka as Executive Director/Chief Executive Officer of the organisation.
Chairman of the Board, Professor Ropo Sekoni who announced the appointment in a statement said the decision was taken a board meeting held on September 19, 2019.
Until the new appointment which has been hailed by journalists and other media stakeholders, Alaka has been serving as the Centre’s Coordinator since December 2008.
The board noted that the promotion was long overdue considering Alaka’s long service plus her unalloyed loyalty during the organisation’s long thick-and-thin growing period.
It added that her efforts have been ” central to the organisation’s many successes as a reference point in the promotion of journalism and the media for the enrichment and consolidation of democracy in Nigeria and beyond.”
” During this time, she grew the organisation from its initial two programmes – the annual award and lecture, to more than 10. She was the pioneer Programme Manager of the Wole Soyinka Investigative Reporting Award from 2005 to 2006 having been a key member of the team that commenced the initiative in 2005.”
Alaka is currently a fellow of the 2019-20 class of the prestigious John S. Knight Journalism Fellowships at Stanford University in California, United States.
” She has over 14 years’ experience in journalism, media strategy and programme development and is passionate about issues of collaboration, ethics, inclusion and sustainability especially as they relate with the media and governance.
” She has enabled the training of more than 1050 reporters across 100 media organisations and led the implementation of over 210 reports that have been published across the Nigerian media on issues including health, girls and women, education, the extractives (oil and gas), politics, governance and electricity.
” Among other endeavours, Motunrayo Alaka has served on award boards for the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) International Media and Information Literacy Award Committee and the British Broadcasting Corp. Service Trust,” the board stated.
