• Experts explain why Nigerian research works lack practical application, utilisation

The Federal Government has unveiled the Tertiary Institutions National Laureate Prize, with a yearly prize pool of about N365 million to reward outstanding academic research, innovation and intellectual excellence across Nigeria’s tertiary institutions.

Minister of Education, Dr Tunji Alausa, disclosed this yesterday, explaining that the prize was designed to strengthen Nigeria’s culture of scholarship and ensure that exceptional academic work receives national recognition.

Alausa said the prize would recognise outstanding undergraduate dissertations with commercial potential, exceptional Master’s theses and doctoral research with clear industrial and developmental applications.

He said special prizes would also be awarded in critical areas, including Engineering and Technology, Medicine and Health Sciences, Arts and Social Sciences, Agriculture, Law and Teaching Innovation.

According to him, the initiative is being jointly implemented by the Federal Ministry of Education and the Nigeria Education Repository and Databank (NERD) under the Renewed Hope Agenda of President Bola Tinubu.

“Scholarship matters, research matters, innovation matters, and intellectual excellence deserve a prominent place in our national consciousness,” Alausa said.

Alausa said the prize is not merely an awards scheme but a deliberate attempt to change the aspirations of Nigerian students by demonstrating that academic excellence, innovation and research could attract national recognition and create pathways to enterprise and industrial development.

He said the initiative would also provide a structured platform for identifying academic research that can be commercialised or applied to solving national challenges.

He disclosed that one of the special awards would be the Dr Stella Adadevoh Prize for Medicine and Medical Innovation, in honour of the late physician whose courage and professionalism helped contain the 2014 Ebola outbreak in Nigeria.

The minister stressed that the credibility of the prize would depend on the integrity of its selection process, promising that entries would be assessed through a transparent, competitive and merit-driven process insulated from political, institutional and personal influence. “Excellence must be the determining factor,” he said.

Meanwhile, researchers and experts in academia and the oil and gas sector have said that most indigenous studies struggle to be relevant because they are not industry-driven and do not align with real market and societal needs.

The experts, who spoke at the Second Lecture Series of the School of Postgraduate Studies of the Federal University of Petroleum Resources (FUPRE), Effurun, Delta State, with the theme ‘Transforming Research Outcomes for Sustainable Development and Economic Growth’, examined why research, especially at doctoral levels, ends up on shelves instead of helping to solve societal problems.

In his lecture, the Chief Operating Officer of ND Western, an oil firm, Oghenekaro Ovraiti, said most doctoral research ends up on shelves because they lack practical application and utilisation.

He stressed that universities must produce graduates with skills that match labour market demands, who would, in turn, drive sustainable development and generate solutions to key challenges in agriculture, health, energy, the environment, and manufacturing, thereby contributing directly to national development priorities and the Sustainable Development Goals.

He emphasised that research should align with market needs to accelerate innovation and competitiveness

The Vice-Chancellor, Prof. Ezekiel Agbalagba, who chaired the lecture, said that Nigerian researchers publish excellent works, yet many of the works are “locked behind paywalls of journals few domestic libraries can afford.”

He said the works are presented at conferences that industry players do not attend and stored in dissertations that gather dust in university libraries.

He urged every postgraduate student and faculty member in FUPRE to publish with purpose, choose journals that are reputable and accessible, present at conferences where the industry and policy stakeholders are present, and to deposit their works in FUPRE’s institutional repository, protect their intellectual property through patents and copyrights where appropriate, and to pursue commercialisation with diligence where it is feasible.