James Ojo, ex-TheCable journalist, wins African Prize for Investigative Journalism

James Ojo, a former journalist with TheCable, has won the 2024 African Prize for Investigative Journalists (PAJI). 

Ojo, who is now a copy editor with Legit.ng, won the online category for his collaborative report with Jabir Ridwan. The award ceremony was held in Nouakchott, Mauritania.

The winning entry uncovered how health officials sell unverified medical documents for a fee across government-owned hospitals in Sokoto state, undermining public trust in health facilities and putting communities at risk of disease.

The report also revealed that some hospital officials issued false medical fitness reports for N1,000, while the medical report is for N2,000.

The PAJI award, launched in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, in 2021, encourages talent and excellence in investigative journalism. It “honours the productions of journalists who showed courage and determination in their work and respected higher journalistic standards and deontological principles.”

The award celebrates investigative journalists in print, web, radio, and TV. Winners in each category get 1,000,000 FCFA or €1,500, while the second and third get 500,000 FCFA and 250,000 FCFA respectively.

During last year’s edition of the award held in Dakar, Senegal, Ojo was a finalist and got special recognition from the award jury for his investigation into petrol smuggling in Nigeria.  The 2024 edition was organised by the Media & Democracy (M&D), an Afro-European organisation, and the SJM (Union of Mauritanian Journalists). 

Ojo is a graduate of mass communication from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka (UNN), where he graduated with second-class upper.

He has won several awards and recognitions for his journalistic works. In 2017, he clinched the reporter and editor of the year awards, respectively, as a campus journalist at UNN.

In 2021, he was named one of the most improved journalists at TheCable, and in 2022, he was named the second runner-up in the Business & Economy Reporting category of the PwC Media Excellence Awards.

He was also named joint winner of TheCable Journalist of the Year award for 2022. The same year, he won the 2022 Hostwriter Prize for collaborative journalism, as well as Legit.ng’s Copyediting Excellence Award in 2023.