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Agency to track impact of petroleum fund in sector

By Kingsley Jeremiah, Abuja
01 August 2018   |   4:08 am
The Petroleum Technology Development Fund (PTDF) said yesterday in Abuja that the agency is currently working on tracking the impacts of the fund in the country.

Executive Secretary of PTDF, Bello Aliyu Gusau

The Petroleum Technology Development Fund (PTDF) said yesterday in Abuja that the agency is currently working on tracking the impacts of the fund in the country.

The agency said it would specifically do a head count of past beneficiaries of the fund’s scholarship and the impact they are playing in the society
Speaking at an induction programme for its 2018/2019 OSS scholars (MSc and PhD), who will be studying various oil and gas-related courses under the Fund’s strategic Pprtnership with top-ranking Institutions in the UK, Executive Secretary of PTDF, Bello Aliyu Gusau said: “We are trying to locate where our past beneficiaries are and track down what they are doing presently in the country.”

Gusau, who said about 122 MSc. and 76 PhD scholarships were offered for the 2018/2019 programme, noted that the reign of foreign experts in the sector is gradually ending.

According to him, there has been consistent reduction in the number of expatriates, indicating that Nigerians are taking over the operation of the sector.

Gusau had noted that the aim of the scholarship was to stem the escalating costs of services imported into the country and further domesticate the benefits of the programmes from foreign training institutions to indigenous institutions

He said the firm has trimmed down the number of universities student could attend from about 64, to about 15 because the first approach was not giving the country the best.

To him, its continuing effort at improving and managing fund has seen the organisation reduce the number of partner universities in the UK to 15 top universities where it feels the scholarship’s high standards can be maintained and the objectives of the scheme will be best served.

Gusau said the country would in the coming weeks award scholarships to scholars going into Nigerian universities, stating that the figure would be about three times the total number of the awardees heading to foreign universities.

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