The Federal Government has announced plans to end what it described as wasteful foreign scholarship arrangements and redirect public resources towards strengthening Nigerian tertiary institutions, research and innovation.
Maruf Tunji Alausa, Minister of Education, stated this on Wednesday in Abuja while unveiling the Tertiary Institutions National Laureate Prize, an initiative designed to recognise and reward outstanding academic research, innovation and intellectual excellence across the country’s tertiary institutions.
Alausa said the government could no longer justify spending scarce public funds to sponsor students abroad for programmes that are already available in Nigerian universities, polytechnics and colleges of education.
According to him, the review of the country’s foreign scholarship and Bilateral Education Agreement (BEA) arrangements is aimed at ensuring better value for public expenditure while building domestic capacity.
“Number one, we have all those courses in Nigeria. And yet, number two, they were going to spend the first year learning French before they started the programme,” the minister said.
He explained that the cost of sponsoring students abroad was significantly higher than supporting a larger number of students within Nigeria.
“And number three, in the position of a few million to support this in Nigeria, we support thousands of them,” he said.
Alausa said the government consequently determined that continuing the arrangement in its previous form was not financially justifiable.
“So the Bilateral Education Agreement was not making sense, again, to us in government. It was a way to waste government funds. And this President will not waste any public funds,” he added.
The Federal Government had earlier discontinued new government-funded scholarships under the BEA programme following a review, while existing beneficiaries were retained to enable them complete their studies.
The latest policy direction comes as the government seeks to place greater emphasis on strengthening Nigeria’s domestic tertiary education system and increasing the value derived from research conducted by Nigerian academics and students.
The minister also announced that the Federal Government was establishing the Tertiary Institutions National Laureate Prize, with an envisaged annual prize pool of approximately N365 million.
The prize will recognise exceptional academic work with potential for innovation, commercialisation, industrial application and national development.
Alausa said the initiative was part of the Renewed Hope Agenda in the education sector and was being jointly implemented by the Federal Ministry of Education and the Nigeria Education Repository and Databank (NERD).
He said the Tertiary Institutions National Laureate Prize Committee had been inaugurated and tasked with providing the strategic direction, governance and integrity required for the programme.
The prize will cover different categories of academic work, including undergraduate dissertations with strong commercial potential, exceptional master’s theses and doctoral research with clear industrial and developmental applications.
There will also be special prizes for outstanding work in critical areas such as engineering and technology, medicine and health sciences, arts and social sciences, agriculture, law and teaching innovation.
One of the special awards will be the Stella Adadevoh Prize for Medicine and Medical Innovation, established in honour of the late physician whose role during the 2014 Ebola outbreak became a symbol of professional courage and public service.
The minister said the initiative was not intended to be merely another awards programme but a mechanism for changing how Nigerian students and academics perceive research and intellectual achievement.
He said the government wanted students and researchers to see a direct pathway from academic work to innovation, enterprise creation and national development.
“We want Nigerian students to understand that there is honour in scholarship, opportunity in innovation and national recognition for intellectual excellence,” Alausa said.
He said an undergraduate developing a commercially viable innovation should know that the country values such work, while master’s and doctoral researchers should be encouraged to develop solutions to national problems.
“Ultimately, we must build an education system that does not simply produce certificates but produces solutions, innovations, enterprises and measurable national value,” he said.
Alausa argued that Nigeria’s ability to transform knowledge into commercially viable solutions would increasingly determine its economic competitiveness.
He said the country needed to systematically transform research into enterprise and intellectual capital into economic and industrial value.
The minister stressed that the success of the National Laureate Prize would depend largely on the credibility of its selection process.
He directed the committee to ensure that the process was transparent, competitive and merit-driven and insulated from political, institutional or personal influence.
“Excellence must be the determining factor,” he said.
Participation and submission of academic reports will also conform with the National Policy on the Nigeria Education Repository and Databank, which the minister said would strengthen the integrity, accessibility and preservation of Nigeria’s intellectual output.
The initiative is expected to provide a national platform for identifying promising research and innovations while encouraging universities and other tertiary institutions to focus more strongly on research that can address economic and social challenges.
Alausa said the government remained committed to building an education system capable of developing the knowledge, skills, creativity and innovation required to drive Nigeria’s economic transformation and improve its global competitiveness.
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