BudgIT unveils 2020 Civic Hive Media fellows

BudgIT, a Nigerian civic organisation that applies technology for citizen engagement, has unveiled eight fellows for the 2020 Civic Hive Media Fellowship programme.

BudgIT’s Civic Media fellowship program started the year 2017, where it featured journalists who were focused on writing human-angle stories that raised advocacy on topics like budget access, project tracking, use of extractive revenues, social justice, anti-corruption, open governments, and transparency.

The fellows will advance and bring attention to transparency, accountability, and civic engagement in these thematic sectors with the diverse use of technology – radio, text, print, IoT, machine learning, artificial intelligence or social media – as a channel to disseminate the stories.

The 2020 fellows were selected from one radio station, one TV station, two online newspapers, two print media organisations while the other two fellows are freelance journalists.

Below are the fellows;

1. Babatunde Okunola – Content lead, Royal FM Ilorin.
Multimedia Development Journalist from Nigeria with awards from ICFJ–UN, YALI, YIAGA & MacArthur.

2. Taiwo Adebulu Iyanuoluwa – An investigative journalist with TheCable
Taiwo has won awards from The Future Project Africa, 2017 Zimeo Excellence in Media SDGs award, and has worked The Nation, WSCIJ, ICIR, and Oxfam Nigeria.

3. Nkiruka Nnorom – Finance reporter, Vanguard Media Limited, the publishers of Vanguard Newspaper.
Nkiruka specializes in data mining, data processing, and analysis as well as using data to tell stories.

4. Frank Ikpefan – Journalist with The Nation newspaper.
Covers Education and Labour beat for The Nation newspaper.

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5. Gbenga Ogundare – Freelance Investigative Journalist.
Gbenga publishes on ICIR, Sahara Reporters, The Nation, and Rural reporters and has bagged numerous awards for his work with organizations like Unicef, Etisalat, and PWC.

6. Kelechuckwu Iruoma – Freelance Investigative Journalist.
Kelechuckwu publishes on Thomson Reuters Foundation (TRF), Al Jazeera, News Deeply, Global Sisters Report, African Arguments, National Public Radio (NPR), Recycling Magazine, TRT World, Africa Report…

7. Osaruonamen Ibizugbe – A correspondent of ITV-Abuja.
Osaruonamen reports on the Nigerian Parliament (the Senate), and the anchor of YouthsCAN-on-ITV-Abuja.

8. Ajuwon Tosin – Investigative journalist and Media researcher, Sahara Reporters.
Tosin’s work focuses on investigating criminal cases including money laundering, rape, kidnapping, drug trafficking, and illegal migration.