[2] He is best known, among other things, for being the Nigerian undercover journalist who spent five days in a police cell[3] as a suspect and eight as an inmate in Ikoyi Prison[4] — to track corruption in Nigeria's criminal justice system, after which the authorities contemplated arresting him.
[5] He was also the journalist who drove the equivalent of a stolen vehicle from Abuja to Lagos, passing through a whopping 86 checkpoints in a journey of over 1,600 km that lasted a cumulative 28hours 17minutes.
In recent years, Soyombo has publicly cited Anikulapo several times as the first of his two mentors and "probably the biggest influence on my journalism career".
[9] Soyombo had two more internship spells with The Guardian — in 2006 and 2009 — and also underwent his national youth service, for which he credits Mr. Anikulapo and Mr. Martins Oloja, the then Abuja Bureau Chief, with the paper.
[14] Soyombo reported that over two days, he drove an equivalent of a stolen vehicle from Nigeria's capital, Abuja, to Lagos without being apprehended by the police, despite passing 86 checkpoints.
[27][28] In July 2019, one month after leaving SaharaReporters, Soyombo went under cover, spending two weeks in detention — five days in a police cell and eight as an inmate in Ikoyi Prison — to track corruption in Nigeria's criminal justice system.
To experience the workings of the system in its raw state, Soyombo — adopting the pseudonym Ojo Olajumoke — feigned an offence for which he was arrested and detained in police custody, arraigned in court and eventually remanded in prison.
[30] The following month, Soyombo went under cover again, this time spending 10 days as a patient at the Federal Neuropsychiatric Hospital, Yaba, Lagos, colloquially known as 'Yaba Left'.
On Thursday, June 18, 2020, Soyombo wrote on his verified Twitter account @fisayosoyombo that former Oyo State Governor, Abiola Ajimobi, had died.
In April 2022, Soyombo was named as a 2022 Fellow of the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at the University of Oxford, United Kingdom where he will undertake research on "the rise of a willing army against the truth — the practice of drowning out a genuine work of journalism with coordinated media campaigns that confuse unsuspecting members of the public, consequently leaving the authenticity of the story in tatters".