Friday, March 29, 2024

Young Wajir boy who quit lucrative BBC job to start a business

BY MARION MAINA / NMG

Abdullahi Yusuf’s career journey has been an exhilarating roller-coaster that saw him work in his dream organisation, the BBC. However, a gnawing desire to do more caused him to call it quits and start his own company as a political strategist.

In a good turn of beginner’s luck, he delivered victory for his first client, Ambassador Mohamed Abdi who was vying for the gubernatorial seat for Wajir County. Unfortunately, Abdullahi’s moment of triumph was short-lived following the annulment of the governor’s win. This however, has not deterred his pursuit to build a vibrant career in political consultancy.

He shares his journey, hopes and motivation to keep pressing on.

“I was born in Wajir, the second born in a family of five children. Ours was not a prestigious family as my parents were small scale traders. Like most boys in my neighbourhood, I enjoyed playing football. However, my love for watching news greatly surpassed all my other hobbies. I spent most of my evenings watching international news channels such as CNN, Aljazeera and listening to BBC news.  I found local channels’ news too brief that couldn’t satiate my appetite for news. After watching the local news during primetime, I would instantly switch back to Aljazeera or CNN to catch up with the international scene. One of the major highlights of my childhood is following the coverage of 9/11 and the Afghan War in 2002. I was in Class Eight.”

Abdullahi was very fond of one of his maternal uncle and their bond grew very close over the years. This uncle took him in and raised him as one of his children. After excelling in his KCPE, Abdullahi received an admission letter from Wajir High School. He opted to look for a school outside Wajir as he had spent all his life in his hometown. However, after spending one year in Makindu High School Makueni, he got terribly homesick and requested his uncle to get him a school back in Wajir. He was admitted to a school in Khorof-harar where he sat for his KCSE.

“My uncle has been like a father to me. His faith in me continues to motivate me to date. When he let me switch schools without grumbling over it, I was elated. I purposed to shine in my academics and make him as well as my parents proud. It was while in high school that I discovered my passion for writing. Whenever I came across old newspapers or magazines, I would read the articles and write short commentaries on them but never got to submit them as they were based on very old articles. Around that time, I started courting the prospects of a career in journalism. I had enjoyed watching reporters covering stories from across the globe and now I felt this stirring in my spirit as though a calling to the journalism profession. In 2005, while in Form Three, I wrote an article on the adverse effects of tribalism in politics and submitted it to Daily Nation. It got published and that day, the head teacher brought a copy of the newspaper to school. The article was read aloud during parade assembly and later hung in the head teacher’s office wall.”

Abdullahi later joined the University of Nairobi to pursue a degree in journalism and media studies. Most of his time in campus was spent volunteering at Eastleigh-based radio station Star FM from 2008 through to 2010.

In 2010 during the referendum, he got a job with Interim Independent Electoral Commission (IIEC) as a trainer of trainers on the biometric system. Kenya National Human Rights commission posted him to Garissa as an observer of the referendum vote. Part of his weekly reports made it to the preliminary reports submitted by the commission at the end of the referendum process.

After finishing campus, he began freelancing for BBC Somali his entry being a interpreter in the African Union (AU) and United Nations (UN) meetings. After working with BBC for slightly over a year, he was absorbed as a fulltime employee following intense vetting and joined BBC Monitoring, the think tank of the corporation.

“Joining BBC was the onset of realising my career dreams. I remember one day while in Class 8, I wrote a composition for my classwork based on the Afghan war that I had been following closely on TV. In my composition, I was a renowned BBC reporter covering the warzones. Several years later, I find myself working for BBC. My job revolved around monitoring the horn of Africa on issues of security, politics, energy and so forth. In 2013, I worked from Broadcasting House in England as an analyst for BBC Somali. At one point, I got arrested along with two of my colleagues because of some of the stories aired by BBC. We were eventually released after an intervention from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In 2014, I served in India monitoring the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC). In all my travels, I was intrigued by how much politics was intertwined with every other aspect of society.  Growing up, I had loved politics but always saw it as a reserve for the affluent and elites in society. The realisation that politics did not exist in a vacuum but relied on social, economic, cultural, environmental, technological and such like factors to exist prompted my thought of getting into politics. However, I did not wish to be a politician.”

Abdullahi took two years to contemplate his niche in the field of politics. Inspired by two gentlemen; David Axelrod the political strategist behind Obama’s presidential campaign and David Plouffe Obama’s campaign manager he decided to quit his job at BBC in 2017 and start a Political Consultancy company.

“I realised that most of our politicians do not care about strategies. Where I come from, most of the aspirants would only talk to clan elders and assume that was enough to garner the votes needed to win an election. This is an outdated presumption.

The youthful voters who are increasing by the day do not rely on clan leadership to make a decision on how to cast their votes. They desire to engage directly with the aspirants be it through social media or reading their manifestos.”

He had a rough start trying to convince aspirants to buy into his political strategies.  Most of them did not believe in the power of social media and were not flexible enough to learn alternative avenues of campaigning.

That however did not deter this upcoming political strategist. He soldiered on, knocking very doors to pitch his ideas. Eventually, he was able to shake hands over a contract with Hon Mohamed Abdi who was then vying for the gubernatorial seat of Wajir County.

Abdullahi’s company spear headed a successful campaign that saw Mohamed Abdi declared Governor of Wajir County in the 2017 general elections.

However, Governor Abdi’s win was nullified on the account of not meeting the legal requirements to vie for the seat and also that the election was marred with irregularities. The court further ordered a by-election to be held in accordance with the constitution and electoral laws. Although Abdullahi found this news to be disheartening, he remains very optimistic that they will win the election once more.

“It was disappointing to say the least but such is life. The experience has brought out so much strength that I didn’t know I possessed. In the coming days, the work will only get more intense, decisions more crucial and planning more acute. I am well braced for that and confident of a happy ending. I made a courageous move to quit my job and follow a dream. It will not end with this temporary hurdle.”

This profile was first published in the Daily Nation by Marion Maina.

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