More Trouble for Daily Trust as Mahmud Jega resigns, quits popular Column 

Set to launch another paper

By DESERT HERALD

Top northern paper, Daily Trust has been struggling with setbacks of recent. The paper had recently sacked more than 80 staffs in an exercise that was meant to save the paper from imminent collapse due to dwindling revenue and high cost of production.

As a strategy for survival, Daily Trust, arguably the richest and most successful northern paper in history had to reduced the quantity of its daily publication by more than half because of low patronage from its hitherto cult like readers while the daily advertorials have reduced significantly.

Inside sources also revealed that there is silent crisis between top management of the Media Trust, allegations of mismanagement and corruption against pioneer shareholders of the company.

As a result, ace columnist and wordsmith, Mahmud Jega, who has served the paper for almost 15 years has resigned as columnist and chairman of the Editorial Board of Daily Trust. Mr. Jega’s resignation took many by surprise and has sent a very bad signal that all is indeed not well in Daily Trust.

It would be recalled that not long ago some top editors of the paper resigned out of protest against the paper’s new policy. They established an online newspaper called Dateline. Mr. Jega too DESERT HERALD gathered did not resigned to rest at home but to plot another paper that may challenge his former paper, Daily Trust.

For the Chairman of the Editorial Board to resign from his stragegic post and disengaged from his popular column completely (a column that attracts wide readership for Daily Trust), clearly shows that all is not well in the organisation.

Jega this paper learnt will now lead a new media company named 21st Century Chronicle.

Mr Jega, who maintained the Monday Backpage Column for over a decade, joined the company in 2006 as Managing Editor, later served as Editor and finally as Deputy Editor-in-Chief and chairman of the Editorial Board.