Yusuf Hamisu Abubakar is a lawyer by training, with versatile knowledge in different fields of specialization including finance, management, and economics. He graduated from the Bayero University Kano in 1987 with an LLB degree, and thereafter proceeded to the Nigeria Law School and acquired a BL in 1988 He obtained a Masters degree in Business Administration from the University of Exeter UK in 2008.  

He attended various courses both locally and overseas, including Financial Management and Accounting for Senior Managers (SMU Dallas) in the USA; Negotiation Skills for Executives, Templeton College, Oxford University (UK); Chief Executive Programme (CEP13), Lagos Business School; and Corporate Governance at the Harvard Business School (Boston, USA).

Abubakar held diverse positions in the public service as well as the private sector. He served as Director-General, Bureau for Lands and Survey, Kaduna State, where he brought his initiative and broad vision to bear on Land Administration in Kaduna state. He then served as a member of the Kaduna State Executive Council as Honourable Commissioner of Health and Social Development, and later Honourable Commissioner of Finance and Economic Planning respectively. He then went into active legal practice until he was appointed as the Pioneer Executive Secretary of the Petroleum Technology Development Fund (PTDF) where he designed a robust organizational structure and developed the Fund’s operational culture of excellence and fashioned it into a knowledge-driven proactive organization. His legacies at the PTDF included the institutionalization of excellence in petroleum training to meet world-class status and international best practices.

Abubakar served as a Commissioner in the Nigeria Communications Commission (NCC) between 2011 and 2015. He is a Director of Kano Electricity Distribution Company (2013 to date), and Chairman of Kaduna Electricity Distribution Company (2015 to date). He was Chairman of Niger Insurance Plc. He is a recipient of various national and international awards and honours, including the Officer of the Order of the Niger (OON); Fellow, Eisenhower Foundation (EF), Philadelphia, USA, and Honorary Doctor of Business Studies, Robert Gordon University, UK.