By Hamza Ibrahim Chinade.

As part of its intervention towards mentoring youths to realize their potentials and excel in their different careers, the Center for Information Technology and Development (CITAD) has for long been holding a monthly Inspiring Leadership Reflection Interactive Series (ILERIS) where successful personalities from different backgrounds and professions are brought into face to face interaction with the invited participating young people with a view to letting them learn from the experiences of the guests. This month, CITAD features a successful entrepreneur and media mogul Malam Kabiru Abdullahi Yusuf, the founder and chairman of Media Trust Limited, publishers of Daily Trust, Saturday and Sunday Trust and Aminiya Newspapers as well as pan-African magazine Kilimanjaro.

Giving a background of the monthly event, Executive Director of CITAD, Malam Yunusa Zakari Ya’u said ILERIS is a youths development programme aimed at inspiring youths to be determined and committed in pursuing their respective causes so as they succeed in the long run.  “Every month we invite personalities with rich profile or experience to come and share their life history hoping the participants will identify their key guiding principles and imitate while learning how challenges and failures are managed, the participants comprise staff of the organization most of who are below thirty, youth from different institutions and organizations in Kano and students of secondary schools”.

The guest speaker began congratulating CITAD for coming up with the programme. Describing his experience at the 19 year old newspaper publishing company that he founded, Kabiru Yusuf said it has been a challenging but rewarding journey because it involved trying to survive in a very uncertain market. Hinting the relevance of passion and interest in choosing a career, Yusuf advised the participants to go for what have they aptitude and interest in as the two can serve as motivating factors even when problems arise, “if you want to enjoy what you are doing and go far in it, you must search yourself and find what is it that you are interested in”, doing what you don’t enjoy is disgusting as one can be easily discouraged when obstacle comes.

Sharing the tips of his paper’s success (Daily Trust), Kabiru Yusuf admitted that “we learn the hard way, we try give what the reader wants, reader doesn’t want you to tell lies, praise people unnecessarily, the reader want to be told the truth, what is happening, and unless you do that you lose the reader and once you lose the reader you are in trouble”. Ending his presentation, the guest speaker threw two courageous quotes to the youths participants, “if you want a job, create it”, “if one door closes, go to the next one”. Questions and comments were entertained by the speaker. The lecture ended with CITAD publications presentation to Malam Kabiru Abdullahi Yusuf by Malam Ado Shehu Yakasai.