Six Hundred (600) successful postgraduates have been invited for documentation exercise under the PTDF Local Scholarship Scheme that will lead to the presentation of award letters. The successful candidates are made up of Four Hundred and Fifty-Two (452) Msc and One Hundred and Forty-three (143) PhD candidates drawn from each of the 36 states of Nigeria and the Federal Capital Territory.

The documentation exercise for MSc awardees is expected to run from Monday, the 12th of October to Friday the 16th of October while the documentation for PhD awardees is scheduled to take place from Monday, the 19th to Tuesday the 20th of October 2020. The exercise is an integral part of the local scholarship award process to verify the credentials of the awardees and formally welcome them into the Fund’s pool of scholars.

Speaking at the week long exercise for the MSc recipients, the Manager, Education and Training Department, Mrs Rabiah Waziri Adamu who represented the Executive Secretary, Dr Bello Aliyu Gusau welcomed the awardees and congratulated them for emerging successful in a rigorous and merit driven selection exercise. She said with this success, they have automatically become members of the prestigious PTDF Alumni Club as life members. As members, she said they will have the opportunity to interact with the Fund beyond the duration of their programmes, and that this will give the Fund the opportunity to support them where it can and also engage them in some of its activities

Mrs Waziri Adamu pointed out that, although the initial process for this set of scholars commenced in 2018, the Fund’s desire to reform the process and make the scholarship scheme more efficient as well as the emergence of the unexpected Covid-19 in the country delayed the take-off of the programme. She apologized to the awardees for the delay and noted that no one will be shortchanged regardless of the time of receipt of the award “we have seen so many correspondences on social media about the delay of this scholarship, when you see delay in certain things, they are not intentional, the programme is being continuously improved based on the feedback we receive from your predecessors”

She announced some of the reforms to include the domestication of a larger percentage of its scholarship awards; the full digitalization of the LSS management processes, monetization of the laptops, and other improved benefits.

Mrs Rabiah Waziri Adamu encouraged scholars to make contributions and constructive criticism that can improve the process. “Some scholars take time to give feedback on the scholarship scheme, we don’t mind whether it is positive or negative but let it be constructive because it is going to affect future beneficiaries. If you feel, there’s anything we can do to improve on the programme, please feel free, we are always happy to receive feedback. The documentation exercise has not always been like this, at a time it was even manual, we use to carry paper forms from here to the 36 states of the Federation but with time we improved, now its online, so there’s always room for improvement”.

Miss Violet Ogbomo, Head Local Scholarship Division of the Fund, while presenting the PTDF LSS handbook to the awardees urged them to be good ambassadors of the Fund in any university they find themselves in the country and to always strive for academic excellence in their chosen fields of study.
The scholars expressed joy after receiving their award letters and appreciated the Fund for providing the platform for them to further their studies in various Nigerian universities. They further commended the transparent nature of the scholarship process noting that it has reinforced their faith in the ability of the PTDF to deliver on its promises.

From
External Relations Unit