Kabiru Yusuf; Kastina born media chief and executive of Daily Trust, widely circulated and printed in Lagos and Abuja. Born in June 1956, Kabiru Yusuf is an alumnus of Ahmadu Bello University and University of Toronto, Canada. He began his journalism career in 1984 after a stint as a teacher. He has at various times written for Newswatch and Daily Times.
Kabuiru who once worked as Southern African Correspondent of British Broadcasting Corporation, BBC, in March 1998, with the backing of his wife, Aisha, set up Weekly Trust in Kaduna. Yusuf was sufficiently experienced, having worked in Daily Triumph, Today newspaper and Citizen magazine in managerial capacity before he set up to public sector adverts and upscale readership. In the year 2000, he wanted to turn the paper to a daily. Imbued with a good knowledge of the operating environment, Kabiru moved the operational headquarters of Weekly Trust to Abuja from Kaduna. His thinking was that though it was cheaper to produce the newspaper in Kaduna than Abuja, the federal capital held other advantages, including accessibility.
Yusuf achieved not just the dream of turning Weekly Trust into a daily, in terms of advert revenue, his
group of newspapers ranks among the best five in the country. In 2007, the management added a Hausa publication, Aminiya to the Trust family. It was edited by Kabiru’s wife, Aisha, a former staff of Triumph newspaper and Bank of the North. Unlike many northern newspapers before it, Daily trust and its sister publications are not aligned to any political project, in spite of changes in political fortunes of the country from Abacha‘s regime down to the Obasanjo administration. Kabiru holds the belief only media houses which ingeniously surmounts the challenges thrown up by the harsh economic environment and unfavourable government policies will survive[i].
[i] The News March 31, 2008