There are 37 career openings for young Nigerians under the
United Nations bureaucracy, according to UN deputy secretary-general, Amina
Mohammed. Amina disclosed this at a
Cultural Night organised by Nigerians working at the United Nations Systems.
She said the openings are available via the Junior Professional Officers’
(JPO) Programme, including internship for young graduates.
According to her, Nigeria has the opportunity to sponsor its
youth for UN careers through the JPO. But Nigeria has not seized the
opportunity in a long while, she noted. JPO is a programme for the young people
to come and grow their career at the UN and it has 37 positions for Nigeria –
one for each of the 36 States and the Federal Capital Territory.
The JPO programme
provides young professionals with hands-on experience in multilateral technical
co-operation, and is one of the best ways to gain entry level positions within
the UN system. Some Nigerian UN staff at
the event JPOs are sponsored by their own government, which fund their
placement in one of a range of UN organisations. At the cultural night, Amina
asked older Nigerians to pave the way for the youth by creating leadership
opportunities for them . She urged them to stop competing with the
younger ones for employment opportunities. “Whenever there are opportunities,
try and pave the way for the young ones; you are getting old and we want to see
the young ones in the system.
“We need to give
the youth the opportunity because if we don’t give them the opportunities, they
can easily fall victims of crimes,” she said. According to her, the Nigerian
employees at the UN system are getting old and there is the need for the
Nigerian youth to be allowed to come into the system. “Home really does need
us; there are leaders and we are trying with the professionals that we see in
the United Nations. “The work we need to do is not just to the world but also
to remember that at the root of all that, you are only as good as where you
come from. “And it’s really important that we remember, with what we do here,
what we can get back home, that we can encourage those at home, and inspire
them.
“It’s not just
what we do for the world. Can’t we take those expertise back home, Amina said, urging them to make the best use
of every opportunity they got. She condemned what she termed alarming
gender-based violence in Nigeria, saying it has increased in dimensions that
one could never imagine. “So when I look back home and I see that there are
women that are coming back from Boko Haram captivity, they come back with a
type of violence that many, for the rest of their lives, can’t recover from. “But
I also see that what is worse is the kind of violence that is visited upon the
young girl. She is indoctrinated and convinced to tie a bomb around her and
blow it off; that’s violence against girls; that’s violence against women.
“But what I wanted
to say was that as we look at the gender-based violence initiative that we put
a spotlight on our own nation; we all have a part to play. “I know we would spend some money in Nigeria
on this initiative but we all have a part to play individually and collectively
in trying to bring it to zero,” she said. Mohammed also lamented how girls were
left behind in education, stressing that everyone needs to have an education –
the boys and the girls. “The boys we didn’t educate are the same ones that
kidnap the girls that we educated. “So education for everyone is exposure for
everyone; it matters so much; it really does give us the basis, the moral
compass to help us navigate through life.”
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