Days before a nationwide protest over bad governance and a high cost of living, Nigeria is offering its young people jobs in the state-oil company and billions of naira worth of grants among other incentives to discourage the action.<\/p>\n
Nigerian activists have been looking to emulate youth-led protests elsewhere in Africa which have rocked the government in Kenya and prompted a tough security response in Uganda.<\/p>\n
Nigeria’s state oil firm, which seven years ago warned job seekers against falling prey to fraudulent messages about job placements in the company, published on Friday nationwide job vacancies in a post on X for the first time in nearly a decade.<\/p>\n
An NNPC Ltd spokesperson said a flood of applications crashed the company’s website.<\/p>\n
Nigeria’s ministry of youth development on Friday also relaunched a 110 billion naira ($70 million) youth investment fund that was started in 2020, aimed at providing grants to Nigeria’s youth to generate jobs.<\/p>\n
The youth ministry had said in May said it would revive the programme but little had been heard about it until Friday.<\/p>\n
On Tuesday, Nigerian lawmakers passed a new minimum wage, more than doubling the amount the least paid worker will earn monthly.<\/p>\n
Nigerians are organising online for nationwide protests next week in response to a cost of living crisis that has seen inflation rise to a 28-year-high of 34.2% which followed President Bola Tinubu’s removal of fuel subsidies and a currency devaluation.<\/p>\n
Religious clerics, traditional rulers and other prominent Nigerians have joined the government in discouraging young people from embarking on protests slated to begin from Aug. 1, fearing Kenya-style protests will wreak havoc on the economy.<\/p>\n
The government has sought more time to end hardships and both the police and army leadership have warned against the protests, saying they could get out of control.<\/p>\n
Protesters have said they have a right to peaceful demonstrations, calling the government’s warnings of violence a smokescreen for a potential crackdown.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Days before a nationwide protest over bad governance and a high cost of living, Nigeria is offering its young people jobs in the state-oil company and billions of naira worth of grants among other incentives to discourage the action. Nigerian activists have been looking to emulate youth-led protests elsewhere in Africa which have rocked the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8883,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":7,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"source_name":"Reuters","source_url":"","via_name":"","via_url":"","override_template":"0","override":[{"template":"1","single_blog_custom":"","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"right-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"top","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_share_counter":"0","show_view_counter":"0","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author":"0","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_category":"0","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","post_calculate_word_method":"str_word_count","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","show_prev_next_post":"0","show_popup_post":"0","number_popup_post":"1","show_author_box":"0","show_post_related":"1","show_inline_post_related":"1"}],"override_image_size":"0","image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post":"0","trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post":"0","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","sponsored_post_name":"","sponsored_post_url":"","sponsored_post_logo_enable":"0","sponsored_post_logo":"","sponsored_post_desc":"","disable_ad":"0"},"jnews_primary_category":{"id":"","hide":""},"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":{"override_view_counter":"0","view_counter_number":"0","override_share_counter":"0","share_counter_number":"0","override_like_counter":"0","like_counter_number":"0","override_dislike_counter":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,33,27],"tags":[111,175,2745],"class_list":["post-12666","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-economy","category-politics","category-west-africa","tag-kenya","tag-nigeria","tag-nigerian-national-petroleum-corporation-nnpc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12666","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12666"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12666\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8883"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12666"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12666"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12666"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}