Omolabake Fasogbon, an investigative journalist with THISDAY newspaper has won the 2025 Diamonds Awards for Media Excellence (DAME) for education reporting.
THISDAY newspaper also came runner-up in different categories, including The Newspaper of the Year and Best Designed Newspaper awards.
The award held on Monday in with outstanding media works published in 2024 across media platforms recognised and rewarded.
Fasogbon won the education reporting category for her report “WASH: Girls with Disability Suffer, Rejected in Lagos Special Schools”.
The report exposes how children with disabilities, especially girls face severe barriers in supposedly inclusive Lagos public schools due to the lack of accessible Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) facilities.
It revealed the deplorable state of the non-targeted WASH facilities that force visually impaired and physically challenged girls to navigate dangerous environments just to use the restroom.
In some cases, the girls were denied admission because available facilities were not equipped to support them.
The award judges said of the winning story, “This is a detailed report with explanatory graphics on how inadequate facilities in special inclusive schools for challenged girls in Lagos serve as a contradictory source of discrimination. The writer gives a verdict on how the situation can be redressed”.
Fasogbon’s report was named ‘Education Report of the Year’, beating Premium Time’s Qosim Suleiman and Nanji Venly now of the ICIR.
The organisers also awarded honorary fellow awards which were presented to former Punch newspaper editor, Alhaji Najeem Jimoh and Chairman/Managing Director of Gaskiya Media Limited, Chief Dare Babarinsa.
Fasogbon is a seasoned journalist with over a decade of experience in both print and electronic media, focusing on investigations, gender, human rights, accountability and finance reporting.
Her work has earned numerous honours, including being named the Nigerian Media Merit Awards (NMMA) Female Reporter of the Year and twice emerging as runner-up for the Wole Soyinka Award for Investigative Reporting in 2021 and 2023.
She was also shortlisted for the European School of Oncology’s Cancer Journalism Award in Italy, as well as the Hostwriter Award for Collaborative Reporting in Germany.
Fasogbon’s investigative pieces have been featured in international collaborations, such as with Zam Magazine in Amsterdam, Africa Uncensored, Kenya and Tiger Eye in Ghana. She is also a grantee of the BBC Africa Eye.
She is a fellow of the Wole Soyinka Centre for Investigative Journalism (WSCIJ) Report Women and West Africa Digital Public Infrastructure Journalism, among others.
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