By Edu Atting
The academic and professional success being recorded by scholars that are sponsored annually by the Petroleum Technology Development Fund (PTDF) has been linked to the transparent process that the Fund adopts in selecting candidates for its overseas scholarship programme, the government-owned educational support agency has said.
PTDF is an organization that is saddled with the responsibility of building human capacity or manpower capabilities in the oil and gas industry in Nigeria. In line with the requirements of the mandate, its Overseas Scholarship Scheme (OSS) is one of the flagship programmes of the Fund, which has been running since 2001. The selection process is a very robust process, as every qualified Nigerian is given the opportunity to apply for the scholarship.
What the Fund does is that it places an advertisement when it is time for the scheme to commence, using some of the national dailies and its website. There are criteria that are set for people to apply, and it is those that meet up with the criteria that eventually apply.
“For example, you have to have a first class, a second class upper, or second class lower division degree with relevant industry experience before you can apply. So, these candidates that apply for this scholarship are some of the best that you can get anywhere, and they go through robust selection process,” said Bello Mustapha, who is the Head of the OSS Division of PTDF, during an exclusive chat with Valuechain.
For any candidate to be awarded the scholarship, he or she must pass through both level one and level two selection process. The first selection process is such that if you apply, the application goes into the application portal and the system has a scoring template it uses in scoring all the credentials supplied to it.
Once the first level screening is done, and the best scorers are shown in the portal, staff of the Fund are asked to do the second level screening. What they do is to crosscheck what the system has done in order to be sure that everything is correct. Then, at the end of the day, successful applicants are chosen from each state of the federation, in line with the federal character principle.
As Mustapha told Valuechain, “if 50 candidates are to be selected for PhD and 100 for MSc, like what we did this year, the top 50 and top 100 respectively from each state will be chosen, and at the end of the day, they will be called for the interview. So, the interview is done by a panel; we have some panels that we set up, and it is done in the six geopolitical zones of the country.
“And at the end of the day, the panel which is made up of our scholars and some industry experts is used to conduct the interview. So, it is something that is transparent; it is done online and you will have to agree with their scores at the end of day, even before the results are printed and you sign off on it as a candidate.
“We have our staff everywhere that are also monitoring what is being done, so it is a very transparent system that produces the best in the country and that is why the scholars have excelled. If you look at our previous scholars, some of them are in very important positions in Nigeria and it was the PTDF platform that they used to gain prominence in Nigeria.”
Valuechain learnt that many universities abroad are happy to receive PTDF scholars because of their brilliance or soundness in learning and character.
According to Mustapha, “three weeks ago, I was in the UK to monitor some of our scholars in the Scotland area and I had a meeting with their supervisors, and all the schools that we went to, we had meetings with the students and we had meetings with the school authorities and the supervisors, and what they said about our scholars was that they were among the best crop of students that they had ever seen.”
The above assertion is indicative of the claimed credibility by PTDF with which its scholars are selected.
As the Fund’s Head of OSS Division affirmed, “we choose the best, merit-based candidates, and the scholars come here without knowing anybody, and at the end of the day, they are given the scholarship and they are surprised. So, we are actually here to change the narrative about Nigeria.
“We choose the best based on character and everything before we give this scholarship, and once you merit it, you don’t need to know anybody before you can get it. This is the kind of reputation that we have built over the years.”
Speaking with Valuechain, some of the candidates who attended the PTDF scholarship interview in Abuja validated the claims of transparency, fairness and credibility that were earlier made by the Fund’s Head of OSS Division.
In his comments, Fola Jumoke, who hails from Osun State, said “the process has been transparent, and I did the application and got selected without knowing anybody.”
Also, Jabir Abukakar, who is from Sokoto State, praised the process as “transparent, credible and commendable.”
This year, according to Bello Mustapha, 26,000 applications were received, out of which only 8000 were selected to be part of the interview phase. He added that PTDF scholars have also never been found wanting, both in learning and in character.
Valuechain’s findings disclosed that the Fund has a handbook that it gives to each of its scholars and it contains all the guidelines and what is expected of them.
Since everything is there, it is made very clear to them before they are allowed to proceed for documentation, and after they have accepted all the conditions that are given to them. As a result of this, they have been able to live up to the expectations of PTDF and their host institutions.