The Chairman of the Board of Directors of Media Trust Limited, Publishers of Daily Trust titles, Mallam Kabiru Yusuf, has said that Nigerian institutions must imbibe the culture of rewarding integrity and excellence as part of efforts to nip corruption in the bud.
The media mogul stated this last night during the 11th edition of the Media Trust Long Service and Merit Award held at the company’s corporate head office, Abuja.
According to Yusuf, rewarding integrity is one of the best ways to tackle corruption in the country.
He dispelled the claims in some quarters that the company was highly sentimental, emphasizing that the awards presented showed that there was no tribal sentiment in the choice of the awardees.
“Everybody talks about corruption in Nigeria. How do you stop corruption? You have to reward integrity and that we are trying to do.
“We are trying to say that if you do your work well, if you protect what belongs to all of us, we will not forget, we will remember. These are things that we will keep doing to make the company even better.
“The company is facing COVID as you know. It is world over. There is economic difficulty, there is insecurity. But in our little corner here, we are doing what we have to do.
“Whoever does well is rewarded; we really don’t look at faces, we look at performance. We still mean to be one of the best and we are trying to be the best. This is one indicator of that.
“The diversity we saw in the people we gave the awards, I would like to urge the Editor-in-Chief to actually show this to the Nigerian public that this is a very diverse company, that we don’t employ based on sentiments, we employ based on merit.
“When we sack somebody, people start saying oh, this man is a Yoruba man, this guy is an Igbo man, then these guys are sacking him. They don’t say so when we are employing them.
“This is a very diverse company. We employ people and we keep them because they deserve to be kept. We don’t do it because they are Hausa or Fulani; we don’t do it because of relationships,” he added.
The Media Trust Chairman also announced that efforts were on top gear to birth a television station in addition to the Daily Trust titles.
He said, “We want to be a model in the Nigerian business ecosystem. This is a company that strives for excellence.”
He advised staff members to always stick to the rules of the company, adding that when completed, the television station would complement the role of the print platform.
He said the company would continue to reward integrity and excellence to enhance productivity and growth.
Forty one members of staff received various awards, including cash prizes.
