A viral picture being shared across social media, especially WhatsApp, claims the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations is recruiting 1779 to join the agency in Nigeria.
The recruitment advert partly read “Qualified and interested individuals must send their application documents consisting of well detailed CV and Cover Letter to gombess190.outlook.com not later than 24″ May 2024 N/A Apply only once.
Indicate the position you are applying for on the email subject line. Shortlisted candidates shall be contacted via email on a rolling basis. Check your email address regularly”.
FAO supports governments and partners to design the right policies and programmes to end hunger, promote food security and promote sustainable agriculture for millions of people around the world.
It opened its office in Nigeria in 1978 and currently operates directly with Six Ministries of the Federal Government (Agriculture and Rural Development; Budget and national Planning; Water Resources which houses Department of Irrigation and; Environment which is responsible for forestry and climate change issues, Health- Food safety and nutrition and; Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development) and Ministries of the State Governments.
Going by the recent scams from fraudulently obtaining personal details of people, it is important to authenticate the origin of the advert.
Putting up the image on Google, two results came up. First on Haskenews blog, published on Saturday, May 18. The website also has some other job postings.
Another link led to Nairaland. The same image was posted by Eminence50 and already had 3 likes on Saturday. Eminence has made 197 posts on the blog
To verify the claim, we went to the verified Facebook page of FAO Nigeria. The first post on the page was a disclaimer of the circulated recruitment advert.
The agency clarified FAO did not issue the vacancies as contained in the advertisement.
It distanced itself from the origin and email in the advert advising the general public to visit the official website and social media handles for information.
The circulated advert brandished as fake was accompanied by the caption:
“DISCLAIMER! DISCLAIMER!!! DISCLAIMER!!!
Our attention was drawn to a one-paged document with 1779 job openings purportedly advertised by FAO Nigeria.
FAO Nigeria did NOT issue these vacancies as contained in the said advertisement.
The origin and the email address provided in the body of the document is NOT known nor connected to FAO in any way.
THE GENERAL PUBLIC IS ADVISED TO DISREGARD THIS ADVERTISEMENT
Please visit our Twitter handle @FAONigeria and website www.fao.org/Nigeria/en for more details.”
We went further to check the official website of the FAO and found out that there was only one opening for the position of Assistant FAO representative (programmes) at the Nigerian office.
CONCLUSION
The claim that FAO Nigeria is recruiting 1,779 staff is FALSE
