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…Announces 250 job openings for Nigerians
By Uche Usim
Buoyed by the need to deepen talent export for the country to earn huge foreign exchange, the Minister of Industry, Trade and Investment, Dr. Doris Uzoka-Anite, on Tuesday, supervised the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) signing ceremony between the Ministry and UTEL Ltd to achieve the aforementioned objective.
The deal seeks to connect Nigerians to foreign jobs in Kuwait, Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), Scandinavian countries, among others. The MoU will be executed by the National Talent Export Programme (NATEP).
According to a statement from Dr Femi Adeluyi, National Coordinator of NATEP, the signing of the MoU marked another milestone in the government’s efforts to ensure that Nigerians have access to quality employment opportunities.
“These employment opportunities could be direct employment and emigration of our talent or utilisation of the Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) model for gainful and meaningful employment for those based in Nigeria.
“Through NATEP, Nigeria can honourably export her talents in a mutually beneficial and reputation preserving way, putting an end to illegal migration and the embarrassment therefrom to the country,” the statement noted.
The MoU was signed with UTEL Ltd, a Nigerian subsidiary of Unique Agency Kuwait- a leading provider of expatriate employees for the government agencies and departments in the State of Kuwait. The partnership with UTEL is to aggregate foreign jobs for Nigerians from Kuwait and other Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries. This is in line with the Federal Government’s aim to forge mutually-beneficial partnerships with nations and global institutions to facilitate the provision of jobs for Nigerians. During the ceremony, an announcement was made about openings for 250 foreign jobs for Nigerians.
Nigerians in diaspora are known to rise like cream to the top of their professions and data validates this notion. For example, research from the Migration Policy Institute Washington-DC, indicates that more than have of Nigerian immigrants (54 per cent) are likely to occupy management positions, compared to 32 per cent of other immigrants and 39 per cent of the US-born population. Similarly, the 2021 Office for National Statistic Report from the United Kingdom (UK) showed that 44 per cent of adult residents born outside the UK have some form of qualification, compared to 31 per cent of UK-born residents, while 66 per cent Nigeria immigrants have received one form of qualification or another. It goes to show the level of quality that Nigerians can bring to the table.
In efforts to promote talent and services export, as well as managed migration, the MoU specified a “1+2” approach for the partnership. With this approach, for every Nigerian that is selected for a foreign job through NATEP, the partners will commit to helping connect an outsourced role to the Nigerian BPO ecosystem and also support in the training of a Nigerian to refresh the local workforce.
Other dignitaries at the event included the Mr. Athbi Hussein Al Awadi (from Kuwait); Mr. Tahir Saleh Hashim (from Oman); and Advokat Torgeir Knutsen (from Norway), among others.
The Minister concluded the ceremony by assuring the partners that Nigeria was fully committed to upskilling its talent pool to power the industrial revitalization plan of the Federal Government and to also provide skilled citizens for global talent opportunities.
