Nigerian appointed as Deputy Secretary-General of the United Nations

New UN Secretary-General António Guterres on Thursday announced the appointment of Nigeria’s Amina Mohammed as Deputy Secretary-General.

“I am pleased to announce that I will be appointing Ms Amina J. Mohammed of Nigeria as my Deputy Secretary-General, and Ms Maria Luiza Ribeiro Viotti of Brazil as my Chef De Cabinet. I also intend to create the position of Special Advisor on Policy, and to appoint Ms Kyung-wha Kang of the Republic of Korea to this new role,” Guterres said.

“I am happy to count on the efforts of these three highly competent women, whom I have chosen for their strong backgrounds in global affairs, development, diplomacy, human rights and humanitarian action,” he added. “These appointments are the foundations of my team, which I will continue to build, respecting my pledges on gender parity and geographical diversity.”

Amina Mohammed (55), Nigeria’s current Minister of Environment, served as UN Under-Secretary-General and Special Adviser to outgoing Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Post-2015 Development Planning.

Mrs Mohammed is one of the ministers appointed into his cabinet purely on merit by President Buhari.

She has served three Nigerian presidents over a period of six years as Senior Special Assistant on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). In 2005 she was charged with the co-ordination of the debt relief funds (US$1 billion per annum) towards the achievement of MDGs in Nigeria. From 2002 to 2005,  Mohammed served as co-ordinator of the Task Force on Gender and Education for the United Nations Millennium Project.

Mohammed was born in Kaduna, Northern Nigeria, in 1961, to a British mother and a Nigerian father. She has six children.

Guterres, succeeds outgoing secretary-general Ban, who bows out on 31 December 2016 after a decade of two terms, while the new secretary-general assumes office on 1 January 2017, for the next five years.

Sola Jolaoso

 

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