Job Openings at Search for Common Ground (SFCG)

Position Summary

• The Admin and Procurement Manager has the responsibility to implement, enforce and monitor Search standard operating procedures in administration, logistics, procurement, and security for Search operations in Nigeria.
• S/he contributes to the overall development and attainment of long term strategic objectives of the organization.
• This role works under the direct supervision of the Director of Finance and Administration.
• The role holder will serve as line manager for Security, procurement, logistics and administration staff, and assists to develop the capacity of the team in all these aspects
• The position will be based in Abuja with various visits to field offices.

Roles and Responsibilities
Administration and Logistics Management:

• Ensure that proper administration and logistics systems and procedures are followed in the every office administration and management.
• Strengthen administrative systems - Identify gaps in admin and operational policies, develop and revise the organization's administration and operations policy on an annual basis, as per leadership and management team (LMT)’s decisions;
• Provide oversight and supervision to admin and logistics staff to ensure smooth functioning of office administration, including office running and maintenance;
• Provide ongoing daily mentoring and guidance to staff in logistics and administration as they develop and implement their own work programs;
• Supervise the management of all insurance claims relating to Search assets, vehicles and legal matters.
• Establishes office management manual and guidelines and manages internal communications
• Supports staff travel including visas, advances, transport, and accommodations needs
• Draw up budgets for all projects and activities, manage spending within budgets, and provide justifications for variances to the Country Finance Manager.
• Liaise with regional teams, ensuring regional priorities and logistics policies and procedures are understood and applied effectively.
• Ensure timely and effective compliance with all government approvals and other accountability mechanisms, and provide a central point of liaison for government.

Procurement Management:

• Work closely with program team to develop quarterly/annually procurement plans (based on quarterly distribution plans and annual work plan) to ensure timely availability of the products for program activities.
• Supervise the current procurement system to ensure maximum transparency and accountability
• Update the monthly budget estimation and tracking to Finance Department.
• Track and evaluate vendor performance and improvements related to pricing, contractual terms, and/or scope of services.
• Develop and/or update relevant organizational policies, processes and tools to ensure full compliance with Search as well as donor regulations and procedures.
• Supervise the procurement products including IEC materials, promotional items etc.
• Review all contracts (for product and/or service procurements) to ensure quality standards are met, prior to submitting for review and approval as required by Search procedures.
• Supervise monthly stock reconciliation
• Set up/maintain a system for centralized management of all contracts including service contracts and production contracts.
• Review terms of reference to ensure the quality of inputs to be procured
• Work with suppliers/agencies in the selection of the most qualified and cost effective vendors.
• Coach, supervise and support the Procurement Staff on a daily basis

Security Administration:

• Work closely with security consultant and senior leadership teams to ensure security strategies for Search Nigeria and that response are appropriate and aligned with regional and global priorities.
• Provide technical advice and support to the Country Director and Head of Offices on security and crisis management issues and their likely impact on Search Nigeria operations.
• Deliver oversight of security prevention, preparation, response and recovery activities, particularly in the North East and to counter threats emerging from changing political, social and economic situations.
• Review minimum-security standards in Nigeria and promote alignment with Search’s Core Security Requirements. Support and advise all Nigerian offices in observing the appropriate security standards in accordance with the country risk rating.
• As job descriptions cannot be exhaustive, the position holder may be required to undertake other duties that are broadly in line with the above key duties.

Education

• Candidate should have a minimum of Bachelor's degree or its equivalent in Business administration, Finance, Procurement, Logistics or Supply Chain Management.
• Master's degree and Professional qualification in the relevant field is an added advantage.

Required Experience:

• At least 7-10 years of professional experience in similar role.
• A minimum of 4 years of managerial experience with a minimum of 5 direct reports.
• Experience on management of donor-funded development projects is required;
• Experience in working with international organizations at least for 5 years.

Other Relevant Requirements:

• Strong working relationship with the Government Institutions and have solid knowledge of the Nigerian Law
• Leadership, supervision, good interpersonal and decision making skills are required.
• Excellent written and oral communication skills in English
• Demonstrated high level organisational and time management skills, including the ability to plan and manage workflows and balance competing priorities to ensure timely processing to meet deadlines in a complex environment.
• Demonstrated ability to respond effectively to challenges, work effectively in a cross functional, diverse and busy team environment with minimal supervision
• Demonstrate integrity, alignment with Search’s values and ethical standards;
• Promote the vision, mission, and strategic objectives of Search;
• Capacity to adapt to a multi-cultural context, and tolerance and respect to issues related to gender, religion, race and nationality;

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Locations: Abuja, Borno, Delta, Adamawa, Jos
Consultancy: Institutional Learning - Conflict Analysis
Duration: January - March 2019

Position Summary

• Search for Common Ground seeks experienced and highly motivated individuals to serve as Conflict Analysis Consultant to support state level implementation of project on increasing the participation by marginalized groups in Nigerian political processes. The consultant would lead the production of the monthly conflict analysis in the two regions; provide ongoing conflict analysis and monitoring of the elections in each of the target states, as well as national issues that could impact the target states.
• They will work closely with the Project Coordinators, Project Officer; managers and coordinators of other Search projects in the project states in gathering sufficient information for monthly and real time conflict analysis on the dynamics of election and the risk or actual incidences of violence before and after the elections.
• S/He shall be supervised by the project’s Senior Program Manager and work in close coordination with other members of the project team and other projects of Search in the states. 
• The position will be based in Maiduguri or Yola for the North East (one person) and Jos or Makurdi for North central zone (other person).

About the Project

• To respond to the challenges of the 2015 election and promote sustainable long-term CSO engagement in electoral and political processes, the Electoral Empowerment of Civil Society Project (EECSP) Consortium is implementing a five-year initiative to:
  • Improve impartial observation, accurate reporting on, and recording of election vote totals using domestic electoral observers during and after the 2015 election cycle;
  • Improve management within Nigerian partner CSOs; and
  • Increase participation by marginalized groups in Nigerian political processes. The Consortium includes the National Democratic Institute (NDI) as the lead partner, World Learning (WL), the Center for Democratic Development – Ghana (CDD-Ghana) Search for Common Ground (SFCG). In the one-year extension of the project (Year 6) Search’s intervention will also contribute to Objective 3: Increased Participation by Marginalized Groups in Nigerian Political Processes and special focus on Violence Mitigation for 2019 Polls in the Middle Belt (Plateau and Benue) and the Northeast (Borno and Adamawa) regions and Bayelsa and Kogi states in their off-season election later in 2019.
• The activities of this project would be implemented in two phases. The first phase would focus on the federal and state level elections in Plateau and Benue states in the North Central, and Borno and Adamawa states in the North East, with intensive activities between January and March 2019, with selected activities continuing in the post-election period.
• The second phase of proposed activities will be for gubernatorial elections in Kogi and Bayelsa states from September to December 2019.

Roles and Responsibilities

• Develop indicators for monitoring violence before and after the elections. The indicators will be reviewed and approved by the team.
• Gather early warning information on election violence in the project states, utilizing credible,  open sources including media reports, information from security, government and community sources and information from existing early warning systems of Search in the states
• Analyze the information gathered using different analytical tools and produce two monthly reports and other special reports of potential and incident of political violence in a prompt manner
• Share regular update of changing dynamic and risk of violence with the project coordinator and manager.
• Participate in Search’s Community Response Network (CRN) and Community Security Architecture Dialogue (CSAD) and Peace and Architecture Dialogue (PAD) and work with the project coordinator to share early warning information with the members.
• Support the project coordinator in engaging stakeholders to get response to the early warning report and mitigating violence.
• Contribute relevant context specific information to the development of peace messages for the project.
• Contribute to media and social media monitoring and support the project officer in fine-tuning to output of the monitoring.

As job descriptions cannot be exhaustive, the position holder may be required to undertake other duties that are broadly in line with the above key duties.

Educational Qualifications

• Master's degree in Conflict and Peace-building Studies, International Relations, Development Studies, Political Science or related fields; PhD degree will be an added advantage.

Required Experience:

• A minimum of 5 years of professional experience carrying out conflict analysis, research, or election related assignment
• Demonstrated skills of using different conflict analysis frameworks and excellent analytical and writing skills
• Experience working on election violence prevention will be a strong added advantage.
• Understanding of political and social conflict contexts of elections in project states and Nigeria and experience working in the region.
• Ability to prioritize, plan and organize workflow to tight timelines; handle multiple tasks, and be flexible with changing priorities.
• Ability to work with minimum supervision and produce excellent outputs
• Excellent working knowledge in English and Hausa language
• Knowledge of other local languages spoken in the project states will be an advantage.
• Knowledge using qualitative and quantitative data collection and analysis tools;
• Knowledge of early warning systems;
• A demonstrated commitment to high professional ethical standards and a diverse workplace;

Other Relevant Requirements:

• Attention to detail:  The ability to process detailed information effectively and consistently
• Collaboration: The ability to work effectively with others in order to achieve a shared goal - even when the object at stake is of no direct personal interest possibilities.
• Learning Ability: The ability to absorb new information readily and to put it into practice effectively
• Adaptability: The ability to remain fully functional by adapting to changing circumstances (environment, procedures and people).

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Locations: Abuja, Borno, Delta, Adamawa and Jos-Plateau

Position Summary

• Search for Common Ground (Search) Nigeria seeks to recruit a Senior Training Coordinator with proven experience and skills in and training of conflict transformation, conflict resolution, conflict sensitivity and do no harm (DNH) principles along with human rights.
• The candidate will have skills in training government actors at the local and state level that includes security personnel in the Common Ground approach to conflict resolution and human rights; the candidate will also have experience working with youth and on farmer-herder issues and leading interfaith dialogues.
• The primary purpose of this position is to both coordinate all training and facilitate workshops across Nigeria where Search operates in the Common Ground approach to all project training.
• The senior training coordinator will work with key stakeholders that include community leaders, the security sector, government officials, women and children, internally displaced peoples (IDPs), and understand cycle programming and the importance of building confidence and fostering good relationships.
• S/he will work under the direct supervision of the National Peace Advisor and in close coordination with all project leads and coordinators. The position will include frequent travels to communities/ LGAs in primarily the Middle Belt and the North East with some travel to the Niger Delta.

Roles and Responsibilities
Coordinate training across the country:

• Develop and implement an effective training coordination strategy for each office and project across the country;
• Work with project leads and coordinators to ensure all training needs are planned and met and;
• Support implementation of all SFCG training activities for each office across the country, either in –person, other SFCG staff or through hired training consultants;
• Establish a pool of qualified trainers;
• Coordinate the hire of consultants where need be, in close collaboration with the HR department.

Design workshops and develop training modules where needed:

• Design each training to be culturally identifiable to the context; Search’s programs, and for the participants attending the training;
• Design training material, methodology, training guides and reporting templates;
• Coordinator is expected to be delivering training that will focus on: Principles of Common Ground in conflict transformation; Conflict resolution and mitigating strategies; Conflict sensitivity and Do No Harm; Dispute resolution; Human rights; Non adversarial Advocacy; Transformative dialogue and interfaith dialogues processes and; Strategies for Trauma Awareness and Resilience (STAR ) co-facilitating with trauma lead.
• The trainer will be using Search’s Common Ground Approach manuals and other Search-developed manuals as a basis for adapting the training curriculum to the projects’ needs

Training:

• Facilitate workshops in the various Search projects across Nigeria where Search works;
• Each training will target 25 to 35 participants: Participants are identified to meet the requirements of e ach project/training that range from children, community leaders including religious and traditional leaders, local and state actors that include security, farmers and herders and former combatants.
• Methodology: Trainers will use a participatory training approach, using a mix of lectures, of experiential approaches with practice, and participatory plenary discussions. It is expected that participants will try, test and put in practice the theory from the lectures and; For each session, the trainer will provide handout or a manual, summarizing the key concepts from the session. The written text will serve as a reference for participants to take home.
• Develop pertinent pre/ post- tests for each training, and grading of pre/post test for assessing the knowledge gained by the participants (test to be designed in collaboration with the DME team of Search)
• Report on trainings delivered with support of project field staff

Reporting:

• Write a monthly summary report highlighting trainings, lessons learned, and challenges, and recommendations including success highlights, feedback from participants, and recommendations for the next stages of Search’s program (sent to line supervisor).

As job descriptions cannot be exhaustive, the position holder may be required to undertake other duties that are broadly in line with the above key duties.

Education

• A degree in Conflict Resolution, Peace Studies, Peacebuilding, Conflict Management or relevant field;

Required Experience:

• Have facilitated/ co-facilitated at least 10 trainings to key stakeholders that include: security, local and state-level actors and community leaders with excellent command of trainees in relevant fields;
• Three years professional experience as a trainer in relevant topics (as per above mentioned list) for a diverse range of audiences (from communities to authorities);

Other Relevant Requirements:

• In-depth knowledge of Nigeria’s various regions, experience in the Middle Belt, North East, or Niger Delta is a plus;
• Basic understanding of trauma and how to help participants manage the effects of trauma that often arise during workshops due to their personal experience of societal violence;
• Fluent in Hausa (possibly Kanuri for the NE) is a plus and;
• Good sense of humour and team spirit