Michelle Faul Becomes AP’s Nigeria Bureau Chief

 

Zimbabwe’s Michelle Faul has been appointed The Associated Press Bureau Chief in Nigeria.

As the Nigeria Bureau chief, Faul will be responsible for directing AP coverage of Africa's biggest oil producer and economic powerhouse as it prepares for elections early next year, a statement announcing her appointment reads.

Prior to her new appointment, Faul  has covered major stories of Africa over the past three decades including the 2009 elections that brought Jacob Zuma to the presidency, the police killings of striking miners in 2012, an event that had echoes of apartheid, and Nelson Mandela's declining health. She has also covered the great famine in Ethiopia, civil wars in Liberia and Sierra Leone and the transformation of many West African countries from military dictatorships amid widespread pro-democracy demonstrations.

Announcing on Faul’s appointment, AP Africa Editor Andrew Selsky describe the new chief as a wonderful writer and a meticulous reporter with deep experience who has a knack for building sources whose skill along with her ability to grasp the nuances of events, will benefit AP's worldwide audience as she explains what is happening in Africa's most populous nation.

Faul joined the AP in Zimbabwe in 1983 but left her home country after two years under threat of arrest for her coverage of mass killings by the government. She later reported on East Africa from Nairobi, Kenya, for two years before moving to the AP's International Desk in New York City in 1988. The following year she transferred to Abidjan, Ivory Coast, to cover West Africa.

Her first official visit to Nigeria for the AP was in 1990 when she wrote about how the oil industry was polluting the land and impoverishing residents of the Niger Delta.

Before joining the news agency, 57 years old Faul had previously worked for the British Broadcasting Corp., Agence France-Presse and The Sunday Mail and Herald newspapers of Zimbabwe.

Faul has won an Associated Press Managing Editors' award for Enterprise Reporting for her coverage of unrest in eastern Congo in 2009 and for coverage of violence in Ivory Coast in 2011.