The Governing Council and Management of the Grooming People for Better Livelihood Centre, a microfinance institution, has announced its 2022 university grant scheme aimed at promoting innovative research and knowledge development in Nigeria.
This is as the company lamented the non-participation of Nigerian students in the scheme, leading to accumulated dormant grants yet to be accessed for national development.
Speaking at a press briefing to announce the scheme in Lagos, Head, Special Projects, Chikezie Egbulefu, said the grant was part of efforts to create an ecosystem of innovation that would be deployed to solve national issues.
He said the grant was part of the bank’s way of grooming people for a better livelihood and empowering them to grow out of poverty, especially indigent ones.
Egbulefu said: “For the past three years, we have given opportunities to 450 students and each year, we earmark N20m for them to grab but you find out that since we started, only about 134 have actually benefited. We still have that money that nobody is coming to access.”
Speaking on the criteria for accessing the grant, Egbulefu said prospective applicant must be either a student at the undergraduate or postgraduate level in a Nigerian tertiary institution, whose research study covers any of such areas as financial inclusion, microfinance, rural development, social enterprise, MSMEs, technological development, women in development or any other research that is aimed at taking people out of poverty.
He noted that the focus of the research study must be relevant to the Nigerian context, practical, innovative and should be capable of promoting any of the above areas of interest.
According to him, the research must also show a high level of originality, and imaginative thought and be data inclusive.
Chief Operating Officer, Centre for Research in Enterprise and Action in Management (CREM) and consultant to the programme, Onyeike Clifford, said about 100 undergraduates and 50 postgraduate students will receive the fund.
“In this edition, we are giving postgraduate students N200, 000 and undergraduates N100, 000.
