Garba Shehu, media and publicity aide to President Muhammadu Buhari, has invited Nigerians to apply for a closed fellowship program hosted by the United Nations Development Programme. 

“Our young graduates may wish to apply for the Graduate Fellowship Program by UNDP. They will place 20,000 graduates into 1-year internships in various multinational companies and development partners. The salary is good and the experience is unquantifiable,” Mr Shehu said in a tweet on Thursday. 

Mr Shehu urged his 1.3 million followers on the social media platform to amplify the opportunity, so Nigerians could take advantage of it despite the nation’s high unemployment rates.

However, checks by Peoples Gazette revealed that the UNDP stopped accepting applications in October 2021. 

“The deadline to apply as a Fellow has now closed and applications are currently being reviewed,” the NJFP said on its website. 

The Nigeria Jubilee Fellows Programme was launched in August 2021 as a youth empowerment scheme organised between the Federal Government of Nigeria and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). It was set up to accommodate 20,000 fellows from across the country. 

It couldn’t be ascertained whether or not Mr Shehu knew of the programme’s deadline before announcing it. Efforts to reach him for comments at the time of filing this report fell through.