Moving unto tomorrow
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- Category: Philosofaith
- Written by Aisha Umar Yusuf
- Hits: 1351
When I made the decision to retire from active journalism (if you would call desk editing and occasional interviews as active in these days of Huda Abdelhamid, Christian Amanpour and Jacky Rowland) I had to spend a lot of time pondering over the pros and cons of the decision. I got help from a very unlikely source. I say unlikely because this was someone I banned from being a daily guest in my house to being only a weekend one. I am here talking about children’s favourite TV star Hannah Montana. When she and her friends on the Disney channel became such a hit with my younger children, feeding, studying and even praying sometimes became a tug- of- war. I had to advice their father that we should ban all cable channels to weekends by removing the smartcards on Sunday evenings and replacing them Friday afternoons. That was how Hannah became only a weekly guest in my house.
At about the time I was going through my ‘Should I, shouldn’t I?’ Hannah was going through the same dilemma, though for a different reason. She has been enjoying the best of best worlds for six years and finally she is fed up with it. These two worlds include being Hannah Montana the superstar, a teen pop sensation they call her and also being a regular all-American teenager (Miley Stewart) once the wig was off. Though it was fun while it lasted, Miley is now ready to move on, no longer finding it easy to live the two lives. She captured her resolve in a song that says:‘I’m moving on, letting go,moving unto tomorrow’ And it felt like Hannah was talking to me. Retiring from active journalism needs not feel like a life sentence, it should just feel like moving on to something less stressful, letting go of a situation one no longer finds exciting, leaping into the future with the hope that it will be equally rewarding and worth the trouble. So I went ahead and wrote my retirement notice in December last year. I was made to remember all this on Thursday last week when the publication of my picture receiving a retirement award in the Daily Trust of that day caused an outpouring of concern among my friends and relations. My phone wouldn’t stop ringing and the first question from both callers and text senders was ‘Why?’
My simple answer is ‘Why not?’ in life there is a time for everything. And the secret of life’s success, I believe, is achieved only when someone knows when to get onto a stage and also when to bow out, gracefully. No matter the sound of the ovation, when your gut feeling is to go, just do so. In fact according to Bill Cosby the best time to quit is when the ovation is loudest. Now, I really don’t know how high the ovation is, to my humble efforts in journalism, but it really doesn’t matter when I know that a higher aim beckons me to move on.
‘Are you that old?’ was another question I had to answer last week. No I am not, in fact according to Media Trust condition of service, I am a little over 20 years short of retirement age, but I was lucky to have met at least one of the conditions for voluntary retirement. You see when that most horrible of Nigerian historical incidents, the January 15th 1966 coup occurred, I wasn’t born yet. I never breathed the same air as those legendary Nigerian patriots, Late Sir Ahmadu Bello, Sardaunan Sakkwato, and Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, Nigeria’s first Prime minister as well as all others felled in that bloodiest of Nigerian events.
I know this clue might not tell you exactly how old I am, but it will definitely tell you how old I am not. Ordinarily, I wouldn’t mind saying how old I am, but an article written by my former colleague, the indefatigable Emmanuel Bello, now enjoying life as a big man in Taraba, scared me off any such full disclosure. In a piece he wrote in 2005, Emma said a woman who tells you her real age can tell you anything. I wouldn’t want to seem that indiscreet, so I would leave you, dear reader, to speculate.
However leaving Media Trust does not mean severing the ties that bind me to the company. In fact my ties to the establishment go deeper than what is seen at the moment because I was there when the Trust umbilical cord was cut. It all began in 1996 when two former colleagues ran into each other in Kaduna and dared to dream. When a series of meetings followed in our modest sitting room at our Malali Low cost residence, I was always in the background serving tea. Subsequently, Media Trust was born. And as a media and marketing outfit, the printing of brochures for established firms was their main job then, and proof reading such work was my job. From the comfort of my home I was the proof reader.
If the work was a media campaign that entailed a bit of writing, Mr Dennis Mordi (who had since left us for the lucrative world of NGOs) and I were the writers. By now the company has moved to Espee Printing office block belonging to Media Trust director, Alhaji Rabiu Garba. At this point in time (tail-end of 1997) plans had been concluded to start a newspaper. I was not part of the three-week long deliberations in search of a name for the paper, but I was definitely there when a name was finally found, even playing a major last-minute role in the process. It seemed only natural that I should be invited to work for the Weekly Trust when it eventually took off. Not only did I have previous newspaper experience in Triumph Publishing, where I rose to the rank of an assistant editor, I had also been made to turn down two previous job offers, due to family considerations, by one of the founding fathers of Trust.
By the time our first edition came out in March 1998, we have got a standard office accommodation at Maradi Aliyu House on Alkali Road Kaduna. I had a column which made its debut in the paper in that first edition called Lifestyle. I was also editing the magazine section of the paper which was meant to provide a soft side to the hard core section of the paper. Apparently it wasn’t soft enough because by the time I met an educated Northern grandmother who told me the paper was too serious, I took it as a personal challenge to provide something that will make it appeal to the feminine mind. Less than two months after Hajiya Zainab, Sultan Ibrahim Dasuki’s senior wife had voiced her criticism of the paper as being too serious, Al-Bint was born. Its first edition came out on November 20th 1998, thus making me the first and second columnist of Weekly Trust respectively.
My encounter with Hajiya Zainab Dasuki happened when I went to interview the 18th Sultan in his house. This reminds me of my most memorable moment in this company. Ahead of our nation’s 38th Independence anniversary, my husband, who was our MD/Editor-in-chief then, assigned me to do a pull-out on all the Northern elder -statesmen who witnessed the nation’s independence in 1960. We identified them from different locations in the defunct region. Thus we had interviews with late Malam Liman Ciroma, late Justice Muhammad Bello, Sultan Ibrahim Dasuki, Alhaji Ahmadu Kurfi, Alhaji Inuwa Wada and others.
Putting the pull-out together that production night led to our remaining in the office till 4am. I had gone home earlier to ensure that our two children had been fed and given a bath before I left them with the nanny at 8pm and returned to work. When we finally drove to our Kabiru Road home in Unguwar Rimi after 4am, Kaduna town was completely quiet. My husband asked me to make tea for us so that we can stay awake and observe the Subhi prayer otherwise we may end up missing it due to exhaustion. After the prayer we went to sleep with the intention of resting for a long time. But as early as 8am, we were awoken by a close family friend who came to say we had to stop our cover story because the person interviewed had seen the promo in another paper and decided not to go ahead with it.
The original plan was to have a former military ruler on our cover, based on an interview he granted an American journalist, Mr Karl Meier. When his permission was sought to use the same interview for our story earlier, he had given it, but seeing the same interview promoted in another paper somehow gave him the jitters. The general called and withdrew his permission, and by the time my husband said farewell to our visitor, we had a fresh problem on our hands. We needed a new cover story. We sat down to review all the interviews in the special anniversary pullout, finally settling for the one granted by Alhaji Ahmadu Kurfi, Maradin Katsina and district head of Kurfi.
Having promoted it to cover, we now had to write a story out of it. That saw me leaving the comfort of the room to our garden behind the house where I relocated to write the cover story. Kabiru’s task was harder because he had to play the unkind role of summoning the relevant production staff back to work. In fairness to the general, he did grant us our own interview some months later, but not without the headache that his earlier indecision had brought. That however gave me my most memorable professional moment in Trust.
Finally, there are those who say I must be truly loaded to leave a well-paying editor’s job through early retirement, the truth is I am really not loaded but like Umaru Dikko reportedly said long ago, all those who believe so, may Allah answer their prayers.
But on a more serious note, no one can achieve any higher aim in life if he says he has to be materially satisfied before he tries it. Prophet Muhammad SAW said ‘If a man (the average human being) were to be given two mountains of gold, he will demand a third.’ And the Holy Qur’an says ‘Wa man yuuqa shuhha nafsihi, fa ulaika humul muflihuun.’ (Whoever is saved from the avarice of his soul is among the successful). Suratul Hashr V,9. So to attain a spiritual aim, like finishing the whole Qur’an every month, as is highly recommended, and as I’ve always dreamt to achieve, or observing a daily ta’alim with the children at 8pm, like my friend Hadiza used to do, cannot be done when you are rushing to beat a deadline or you had to be in the office till after 9pm and the homework is undone. Yes, when I move unto tomorrow I am moving into full-time motherhood among other things. And that is all about making sacrifices and investing in the next generation, not about the monthly naira and kobo.
Articles
Moving unto tomorrow
Category: Philosofaith Written by Aisha Umar Yusuf Hits: 1351
When I made the decision to retire from active journalism (if you would call desk editing and occasional interviews as active in these days of Huda Abdelhamid, Christian Amanpour and Jacky Rowland) I had to spend a lot of time pondering over the pros and cons of the decision. I got help from a very unlikely source. I say unlikely because this was someone I banned from being a daily guest in my house to being only a weekend one. I am here talking about children’s favourite TV star Hannah Montana. When she and her friends on the Disney channel became such a hit with my younger children, feeding, studying and even praying sometimes became a tug- of- war. I had to advice their father that we should ban all cable channels to weekends by removing the smartcards on Sunday evenings and replacing them Friday afternoons. That was how Hannah became only a weekly guest in my house.
At about the time I was going through my ‘Should I, shouldn’t I?’ Hannah was going through the same dilemma, though for a different reason. She has been enjoying the best of best worlds for six years and finally she is fed up with it. These two worlds include being Hannah Montana the superstar, a teen pop sensation they call her and also being a regular all-American teenager (Miley Stewart) once the wig was off. Though it was fun while it lasted, Miley is now ready to move on, no longer finding it easy to live the two lives. She captured her resolve in a song that says:‘I’m moving on, letting go,moving unto tomorrow’ And it felt like Hannah was talking to me. Retiring from active journalism needs not feel like a life sentence, it should just feel like moving on to something less stressful, letting go of a situation one no longer finds exciting, leaping into the future with the hope that it will be equally rewarding and worth the trouble. So I went ahead and wrote my retirement notice in December last year. I was made to remember all this on Thursday last week when the publication of my picture receiving a retirement award in the Daily Trust of that day caused an outpouring of concern among my friends and relations. My phone wouldn’t stop ringing and the first question from both callers and text senders was ‘Why?’
My simple answer is ‘Why not?’ in life there is a time for everything. And the secret of life’s success, I believe, is achieved only when someone knows when to get onto a stage and also when to bow out, gracefully. No matter the sound of the ovation, when your gut feeling is to go, just do so. In fact according to Bill Cosby the best time to quit is when the ovation is loudest. Now, I really don’t know how high the ovation is, to my humble efforts in journalism, but it really doesn’t matter when I know that a higher aim beckons me to move on.
‘Are you that old?’ was another question I had to answer last week. No I am not, in fact according to Media Trust condition of service, I am a little over 20 years short of retirement age, but I was lucky to have met at least one of the conditions for voluntary retirement. You see when that most horrible of Nigerian historical incidents, the January 15th 1966 coup occurred, I wasn’t born yet. I never breathed the same air as those legendary Nigerian patriots, Late Sir Ahmadu Bello, Sardaunan Sakkwato, and Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, Nigeria’s first Prime minister as well as all others felled in that bloodiest of Nigerian events.
I know this clue might not tell you exactly how old I am, but it will definitely tell you how old I am not. Ordinarily, I wouldn’t mind saying how old I am, but an article written by my former colleague, the indefatigable Emmanuel Bello, now enjoying life as a big man in Taraba, scared me off any such full disclosure. In a piece he wrote in 2005, Emma said a woman who tells you her real age can tell you anything. I wouldn’t want to seem that indiscreet, so I would leave you, dear reader, to speculate.
However leaving Media Trust does not mean severing the ties that bind me to the company. In fact my ties to the establishment go deeper than what is seen at the moment because I was there when the Trust umbilical cord was cut. It all began in 1996 when two former colleagues ran into each other in Kaduna and dared to dream. When a series of meetings followed in our modest sitting room at our Malali Low cost residence, I was always in the background serving tea. Subsequently, Media Trust was born. And as a media and marketing outfit, the printing of brochures for established firms was their main job then, and proof reading such work was my job. From the comfort of my home I was the proof reader.
If the work was a media campaign that entailed a bit of writing, Mr Dennis Mordi (who had since left us for the lucrative world of NGOs) and I were the writers. By now the company has moved to Espee Printing office block belonging to Media Trust director, Alhaji Rabiu Garba. At this point in time (tail-end of 1997) plans had been concluded to start a newspaper. I was not part of the three-week long deliberations in search of a name for the paper, but I was definitely there when a name was finally found, even playing a major last-minute role in the process. It seemed only natural that I should be invited to work for the Weekly Trust when it eventually took off. Not only did I have previous newspaper experience in Triumph Publishing, where I rose to the rank of an assistant editor, I had also been made to turn down two previous job offers, due to family considerations, by one of the founding fathers of Trust.
By the time our first edition came out in March 1998, we have got a standard office accommodation at Maradi Aliyu House on Alkali Road Kaduna. I had a column which made its debut in the paper in that first edition called Lifestyle. I was also editing the magazine section of the paper which was meant to provide a soft side to the hard core section of the paper. Apparently it wasn’t soft enough because by the time I met an educated Northern grandmother who told me the paper was too serious, I took it as a personal challenge to provide something that will make it appeal to the feminine mind. Less than two months after Hajiya Zainab, Sultan Ibrahim Dasuki’s senior wife had voiced her criticism of the paper as being too serious, Al-Bint was born. Its first edition came out on November 20th 1998, thus making me the first and second columnist of Weekly Trust respectively.
My encounter with Hajiya Zainab Dasuki happened when I went to interview the 18th Sultan in his house. This reminds me of my most memorable moment in this company. Ahead of our nation’s 38th Independence anniversary, my husband, who was our MD/Editor-in-chief then, assigned me to do a pull-out on all the Northern elder -statesmen who witnessed the nation’s independence in 1960. We identified them from different locations in the defunct region. Thus we had interviews with late Malam Liman Ciroma, late Justice Muhammad Bello, Sultan Ibrahim Dasuki, Alhaji Ahmadu Kurfi, Alhaji Inuwa Wada and others.
Putting the pull-out together that production night led to our remaining in the office till 4am. I had gone home earlier to ensure that our two children had been fed and given a bath before I left them with the nanny at 8pm and returned to work. When we finally drove to our Kabiru Road home in Unguwar Rimi after 4am, Kaduna town was completely quiet. My husband asked me to make tea for us so that we can stay awake and observe the Subhi prayer otherwise we may end up missing it due to exhaustion. After the prayer we went to sleep with the intention of resting for a long time. But as early as 8am, we were awoken by a close family friend who came to say we had to stop our cover story because the person interviewed had seen the promo in another paper and decided not to go ahead with it.
The original plan was to have a former military ruler on our cover, based on an interview he granted an American journalist, Mr Karl Meier. When his permission was sought to use the same interview for our story earlier, he had given it, but seeing the same interview promoted in another paper somehow gave him the jitters. The general called and withdrew his permission, and by the time my husband said farewell to our visitor, we had a fresh problem on our hands. We needed a new cover story. We sat down to review all the interviews in the special anniversary pullout, finally settling for the one granted by Alhaji Ahmadu Kurfi, Maradin Katsina and district head of Kurfi.
Having promoted it to cover, we now had to write a story out of it. That saw me leaving the comfort of the room to our garden behind the house where I relocated to write the cover story. Kabiru’s task was harder because he had to play the unkind role of summoning the relevant production staff back to work. In fairness to the general, he did grant us our own interview some months later, but not without the headache that his earlier indecision had brought. That however gave me my most memorable professional moment in Trust.
Finally, there are those who say I must be truly loaded to leave a well-paying editor’s job through early retirement, the truth is I am really not loaded but like Umaru Dikko reportedly said long ago, all those who believe so, may Allah answer their prayers.
But on a more serious note, no one can achieve any higher aim in life if he says he has to be materially satisfied before he tries it. Prophet Muhammad SAW said ‘If a man (the average human being) were to be given two mountains of gold, he will demand a third.’ And the Holy Qur’an says ‘Wa man yuuqa shuhha nafsihi, fa ulaika humul muflihuun.’ (Whoever is saved from the avarice of his soul is among the successful). Suratul Hashr V,9. So to attain a spiritual aim, like finishing the whole Qur’an every month, as is highly recommended, and as I’ve always dreamt to achieve, or observing a daily ta’alim with the children at 8pm, like my friend Hadiza used to do, cannot be done when you are rushing to beat a deadline or you had to be in the office till after 9pm and the homework is undone. Yes, when I move unto tomorrow I am moving into full-time motherhood among other things. And that is all about making sacrifices and investing in the next generation, not about the monthly naira and kobo.