The Wole Soyinka Centre For Investigative Journalism (WSCIJ), has advocated for the engagement of women journalists as leaders in media organisations.

The Executive Director of the centre, Mrs. Motunrayo Alaka, made the call during the opening of the fifth edition of “Female Reporters’ Leadership Programme Fellowship (FRLP)”, on Monday in Lagos.

She said that a survey revealed that only 6 per cent of leadership positions of Chief Executive Officers/publishers were occupied by women in media organisations in Nigeria.

She said that the centre has trained 74 women under its FRLP fellowship to build the capacity of women to occupy leadership positions and mainstream gender perspectives in their reporting.

She said that the 2023 edition of the fellowship was tagged “Champion Building”, which would focus on building the capacity of the participants to be outstanding in their duties.

“The fellowship will focus on building participants’ capacity to strategically engage the media, its stakeholders and society at large.

“This is through impactful leadership projects and profound investigative stories on the leadership status of women in newsrooms and media organisations and the inclusion of more female experts as sources of news,” she said.

The WSCIJ boss said that the participants were chosen by their resolve to champion the leadership status of women in the newsroom, and as expert sources in news.

She said that the fellowship which started in 2014 would change the career and personal life of the participants.

“Open yourself to unlearning, learning and relearning ,” she said.

She said that the fellowship which started in 2014 has trained 74 women, saying that it would change the participants career and personal life.

One of the participants, Mrs. Ijeoma Okereke-Adagba from the Centre for Journalism Innovation and Development (CJID), said that the training would build her capacity on assessing how government fiscal policies affect Nigerian women.

She said that fellowship would educate her on how women in media can build a strong support system for themselves to be able to ‘smash the glass ceiling’.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the participants were selected from NAN, CJID, NTA, Radio Nigeria,TVC and the Cable news amongst others.

The participants would be mentored by the Director of News TVC, Mrs. Stella Din-Jacob, Mrs. Abiola Akiyode, the Executive Director of Women Advocates Research and Documentation, President Lawyers Alert, Mr. Rommy Mom, and the executive Director of WSCIJ.

Topics to be discussed includes fundamentals of gender studies, developing competence and handling stereotypes and conflicts in and outside of the newsroom.