By Juliana Uche-Okobi
All the federal universities across the country are now beneficiaries of the Petroleum Technology Development Fund (PTDF) scholarship scheme. This follows the PTDF’s recent decision to expand the net of its Local Scholarship Scheme (LSS) to cover all the 40 federal universities in Nigeria, a remarkable shift from the 23 universities which the scheme benefited before now.
Mrs. Rabi’ah Waziri-Adamu, PTDF’s Manager in charge of Education and Training, stated this in Abuja, the nation’s capital, at the beginning of the selection interview for the LSS postgraduate programme in the six geo-political zones.
Mrs Waziri-Adamu, who said that the Fund would select 555 Masters and doctorate candidates across the country for the 2019/2020 session of the local scholarship scheme, added that 370 candidates would be selected for the undergraduate section of the LSS. She also said that the PTDF would continue to fine-tune the scheme ahead of the gradual phase-out of the overseas scholarship scheme.
“It is a very strategic programme for the PTDF, as it ties into our policy initiatives of domesticating most of our programmes in a few years to come. Currently, we have over 3,000 PhD and MSc candidates sitting for the interviews. As you know, we have decentralised the interview venue. This is just for the convenience of our applicants,” she explained.
“The LSS is a policy initiative and there is a deliberate attempt to expand the scheme. This year, unlike previous years, where we had just 23 universities participating in the programme, we have all the 40 Federal universities participating in the programme. We are picking 370 MSc candidates from across the nation. That is, 10 from each state, including the Federal Capital Territory (FCT). We are also picking five PhD students from each of the states of the federation, including the FCT.
“The local scholarship has an undergraduate aspect to it. We are picking 10 undergraduate students from each of the states and they are going to all the Federal universities,” she further said.
Explaining why the PTDF included all the federal universities in the scholarship scheme, Waziri-Adamu said: “We have just about 23 universities, but because we want to expand the numbers of the LSS, we now partnered with all the 40 Federal universities to implement the scheme.”
As Waziri-Adamu stated, the Fund also has an upgraded programme, where it picks departments in some Federal and state universities that have oil and gas-related programmes, or upgrade both in human capacity and infrastructure.
While stating that the LSS was instituted in each of the upgraded departments, she also said that the Overseas Scholarship Scheme (OSS), which it planned to gradually phase out, was a short-term measure to address the capacity gaps in the Nigerian petroleum industry.
As Waziri-Adamu said, the PTDF, through the implementation of the OSS, had trained a number of lecturers.
“We have so many Nigerians now that are participating in the oil and gas industry that the PTDF has trained. So we feel that the time has come for us to domesticate the programmes and then cut down on the numbers that we sponsor for the overseas scholarships,” she
said.
According to Waziri-Adamu, the PTDF had in the last two years, reviewed all the benefits for the Local Scholarship Scheme with a view to making it more attractive.
“We have included an aspect that caters for Bench work for the PHD scholars; they go abroad and spend six months in a university that offers a programme that is related to their research area. So, they get a supervisor that would work with them abroad. For some of them, it is due to lack of equipment, for some it is because of the expertise that they find in the universities abroad. So, they go and spend six months.
“We also give provision for conferences. This is to encourage our local scholars to have an international aspect to their researches. So, once they have a paper that has been published or that they wish to present, we allow them to go anywhere in the world, as long as we know that the conference is oil and gas-related and it is of high standard. It is recognised in the industry.
“PTDF foots all the bills, including air tickets, and then allowances that would be paid for their accommodation while attending the conference,” she stated.
