The Report Women! Female Reporters’ Leadership Programme (FRLP) is an initiative of the Wole Soyinka Centre for Investigative Journalism (WSCIJ). It commenced in 2014 to focus on major issues of access and abuse as they affect girls and women in Nigeria and was implemented in collaboration with the Royal Netherlands Embassy. As a build up to the Report Women! project, the WSCIJ initiated the Female Reporters Leadership Programme (FRLP) in 2017 in partnership with Free Press Unlimited. The FRLP aimed at supporting female reporters with the skills, finesse and tools to take bold steps that help position them for the highest leadership roles in their media houses.

The FRLP initiative includes training, fellowship (which entails story, and leadership projects), and multi-level advocacy and engagement with media management on the need to change the face of leadership in newsroom to be as female as they are male. So far, the Report Women has produced a documentary – The untold stories of girls and women in Nigeria to  document the issues of access to education, health care, economic empowerment – as well as the issues of abuse – widowhood practice, sexual violence, forced marriage, displacement, domestic violence and other existential challenges that women face.

 

The programme also entailed an impact assessment survey, a survey on policy and practice of gender mainstreaming in the newsroom and a House-to-House advocacy visit to media houses in Abuja and Lagos, The survey results  have provided a point of reference and engagement with media managers and owners on female leadership newsrooms.

As of 2022 under the Report Women! Female Reporters’ Leadership Programme (FRLP), WSCIJ has trained 502 reporters across the country and enabled the execution of 132 girlchild and women-focused stories through its alumnae membership of 74 fellows across the six geo-political newsrooms in Nigeria with two members from Ghana.