Philip Obaji Jr.

Philip Obaji Jr., a journalist from Nigeria, has been a correspondent at The Daily Beast since March 2015. He has reported primarily about the Boko Haram insurgency in northern Nigeria, human rights abuses in West and Central Africa, and the trafficking of uprooted people in the two regions. His articles have appeared in numerous publications including USA Today, Foreign Policy, Al Jazeera, The Guardian, and Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Throughout 2022, he focused mostly on reporting the heinous atrocities of the Russian Wagner Group in the Central African Republic (CAR) and wrote about how teen girls were advertised on Facebook and sold into sex slavery. He has been the target of Boko Haram, whose militants once attempted to abduct him, and the Wagner Group, which launched a disinformation campaign against him in 2022.

Philip’s reporting on the abuse and exploitation of survivors of conflict in West and Central Africa won him the Jaime Brunet International Prize for the Promotion of Human Rights. He was also shortlisted for the Dutch government’s Human Rights Tulip award.

Philip is currently a fellow in the Berlin Scholarship Program, where he is learning intensively about digital security. He seriously looks forward to sharing his new knowledge with other journalists in West and Central Africa.