The Executive Secretary of the Petroleum Technology Development Fund (PTDF), Dr Bello Aliyu Gusau, said all undergraduate programmes for sponsorship by the agency would now be done in Nigerian universities.

Gusau said this at a meeting he hosted for Vice Chancellors of Federal Universities, where the new strategic agenda that would govern the training and capacity building programmes of the Fund was discussed. The PTDF boss explained that the present scholarship arrangement, which was disproportionately focused on the Overseas Scholarship Scheme, was no longer sustainable and therefore needed to be reversed.

“For the post graduate programmes, the bulk of that for both the Masters and PhD’s will be done in Nigerian universities. We are also open to collaboration especially through the split-site PhD programme.”

He said the fund had not jettisoned the overseas scholarship programmes, but would continue to sponsor few candidates especially for courses that are not offered in Nigerian universities and through partnership agreements with select foreign universities.

The Executive Secretary, National Universities Commission (NUC), Professor Abubakar Adamu Rasheed, welcomed the initiative by PTDF, which he said tallies with the vision to collectively reform post graduate training in Nigeria. (Daily Trust)