Reaching for the star

A tribute to Daily Trust at 16

Idid not have the privilege of being employed by Daily Trust. So, unlike some of its former and current employees, I am unable to dip into my pot of nostalgia to sweeten this piece with reminisces. But I do have my own story to tell about the newspaper.

Some years ago, I noticed that a myth was beginning to take hold to the effect that the northern weather was hostile to the print media. Newspapers and magazines published in the region were expiring on the laps of their founders and financiers at a frightening rate. Born today, dead tomorrow. I was worried about this and wondered why the print media generally thrived in the south but generally had a few years of fame and simply expired in the north. I thought that every problem had a cause.

We had to find the cause to save the media owners from losing their marbles. The first step would be to try and establish facts about the high infant mortality rate of the print media in the north. I thought I could begin the search with my good friend, Mohammed Haruna, the leftist-leaning but one of the most fairminded and respected columnists in the country. I telephoned him from Kaduna airport one warm morning and told him what I was thinking. I suggested we should collaborate in writing a book that would tell the public why the print media in the northern part of the country had the unnerving habit of becoming history when they had made no history to speak of. The book could also burst the myth about the hostile northern climate and help to encourage those who had some cash to spare to invest in the print media in the region.

He agreed. This was before Mohammed witnessed the happy birth and the painful demise of his own weekly newsmagazine, The Citizen.

I worked out a proposed outline for the proposed book and sent a copy to Mohammed. If you check the bookshops you would easily see that the book was not written. We lost the opportunity to separate the myth from the facts. I refuse to say whose fault it was.

But Mohammed feared not the myth of the hostile northern climate. Some years later, he bravely assembled a formidable journalistic team, among whom were Kabiru Yusuf and the late Bilkisu Yusuf, and founded The Citizen weekly newsmagazine. The magazine failed to disprove the myth. It found itself in the lonely grave yard, home to other efforts at bursting the myth.

The point of all this is that when Kabiru assembled a new and equally formidable youthful journalistic team to found the weekly Sunday Trust newspaper, some 16 years ago, goose pimples over ran my body. I trembled because I feared that this one too might fail to burst the hostile northern climate. The more we lost them, the more the myth grew.

Happily, my fear about the survival of the newspaper soon evaporated. As the paper inched its way up the media ladder, it soon burst the myth. It had done better than merely survive. We could all see and appreciate its steady climb. No, Kabiru Yusuf is not a magician - at least the last time I checked he wasn’t. He was tending his cattle on his farm.

The man and his team have put the myth to rest. We should all be grateful for that. What is so remarkable about the success of the Daily Trust is that its success gave others the courage to dare in newspaper publishing in the north. It inspired such successful newspapers as Leadership, Blueprint and Peoples Daily. Some of the owners, managers and editors of these other newspapers are former Daily Trust men and women. They left to try and replicate the success story of the Daily Trust. And they did, each in its own right. These newspapers, if you would excuse my resort to the local parlance, are Daily Trust pikins. Success never lacks brothers and sisters. Abuja is now bursting at the seams with news and features magazines that, if nothing else, survive by deftly exploiting the vanity of the politicians.

I watched with fascination bordering on involuntary heroworship the steady growth of the weekly and later the daily newspapers in the Trust stable. The company has a Hausa language newspaper in its stable. What the Daily Trust has achieved in only 16 years, is truly phenomenal. There is something magical about a newspaper claiming the high moral ground of public trust and building its reputation on it. The Daily Trust has built a synergy between it and the public by convincing the public it could always be trusted to remain true to its professional calling and challenges. The editors and reporters have brought prestige to the Daily Trust titles. I find their investigative reporting refreshing.

No, the Daily Trust’s investigative reporting has not yet brought down a president or a governor in our country but I believe if it continues to prick the balloon of the pompous, it could hoist a politician or two on the petard on their corruption. The newspapers in the stable serve the public with the cold facts about how we are not being properly governed. They speak bitter truth to power on the disconnect between our national challenges and the cosmetic responses to them by so-called leaders. The Daily Trust titles parade a slew of brilliant and informed columnists drawn from the media and the universities. To achieve all these in only 16 years is the challenge its pikins face.

The company engages in the discharge of its social responsibilities by offering scholarships and other help to the needy. It is a challenge to other media organisations in the country.

I was privileged to be invited to deliver its public lecture when the paper clocked ten years. I confess that I poorly acquitted myself. To give you some idea of how truly bad my lecturer was, I do not even remember its title or even what I said at the banquet hall of Sheraton Hotel that afternoon. I happily pocketed my fee. No sense of shame, right? This tribute makes up for that monumental failure on my part. In any case, I am still doing penance by writing a weekly column for the paper. I am also its ombudsman.

As the Daily Trust celebrates its 16 years, its gleaming new multi-storey headquarters building rises through the Abuja sky towards the sky. It is the most eloquent evidence of its courage and ambition: to reach for the star. My informed prediction is that sooner than later, the Daily Trust will take its rightful place on the podium among the great and prestigious newspapers of the world.

I congratulate Kabiru Yusuf and his team - past and present.