YUSHAU SHUAIB’s Prompting, Craft, and Pluses: an outsider’s View By Anthony Ogande
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Penultimate week, the Senate of the Nasarawa State University, Keffi has finally domesticated the unbundling of Mass Communication with the establishment of the Faculty of Communication and Media Studies. Behind this seal was the approval of three take-off departments which Public Relations and Media Studies was one.
Professor M. S. Rabiu, the sitting head of the Mass Communication under whose shoulder the task of implementing modalities for the new faculty lies, sought collaboration with the Nigerian Institute of Public Relations (NIPR).
This move led the team, headed by Dr. Anthony Ogande to Malam Yushau, a Public Relations Consultant, Chief Executive Officer of Image Merchant Promotion Limited and public speaker per excellence to leverage the working of professional field workers and associate agencies of NIPR.
Within the precinct of his sprawling office edifice located at Wuje district Abuja, it was a fruitful conversation with the quintessential Czar of public relations, Malam Yushau who in his humble mien carried the team through his activities on public relations and reputation management at Image Merchant Promotion. Indeed he had an established reputation on the job going by the crowd of awards and testimonies of his numerous clienteles.
To him the many medals that have taken over a section of his office as recognition of his innovation and contribution to PR industry did not celebrate his name because he saw them as nothing but the façade of the world that tickles away. Rather he is more interested in leaving a good name as showcased in his skills at the job. As a result, his life was documented more by the many online publications which has come to exemplify his vocation which has transformed a non existing PRNigeria and Economic Confidential Magazine into global PR network within short time of their establishment.
A native son from Kano with vast appetite to achieve corporate success, he had succeeded in transforming the Image Merchant and Promotion Limited from a humble beginning in 2014 into a multi-billion naira corporation.
Prompting
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A graduate of Bayero University, Kano and the University of Westminster London, Shauib as he is popularly called by admirers, started his career in Public Relations in Delta State Government House, Asaba. He was soon to cut his teeth as Government Relations Officer (Government Public Relations) when he became the Press Secretary to several organizations including Finance, Information, Health, Revenue Mobilisation and Fiscal Commission and the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA). He also consulted for the military, security, intelligent, and other agencies.
Craft
Amongst his many publications were books and journals some of which are Nightmare for the rich, Dozen Tips for Media Relations, Financial Public Relations, An Encounters with Spymaster, and Award winning Crisis Communication Strategies. In the business of PR and Economic news he deals with the nuances of proactive PR as early warning tool or reactive PR as crisis control and management in Image Merchant Limited. To him public speaking is both a hubby and vocation so the job of a spokesman is a craft that gives him comfort. To ensures he runs the job of accurate information purveying he established fact-checker online to confirm or expose fake news which has become the albatross of modern journalism.
Pluses
Some of his pluses were several awards he received as recognition for his hard work. They are PR man of the year 1995, Outstanding Digital PR Practitioner 2019, NIPR Presidential Award 2019, African PR Award South Africa 2016, Botswana 2018, Kigali 2019, and Tanzania 2020.
He won the prestigious Golden World Award (GWA) at the International Public Relations Association on Crisis Management in Qatar 2016, Bulgaria 2017, Spain 2018, and Armenia 2019. He was declared the most creative PR Agency worldwide in 2020 by Global Creative Index (GCI) 2022.
For a man who is accustomed to making speeches as a vocation, his influence within the PR circle was pervasive. He demonstrated this when he commissioned an Ultral Modern Training Center in his home city of Kano to train budding minds in the area of cyber security, computer and other needs at the occasion of his 50th birthday.
Today I salute my warrior of Image Merchant Promotion, Yushau Shauib.
Anthony Ogande, a Senior Lecturer Nasarawa State University
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