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The Executive Secretary of TETFund, Arc. Sonny Echono (right) and the African Union Commissioner for Education, Science and Innovation, Prof. Mohammed Belhocine during the latter’s visit to TETFund…recently
There is no doubt that the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund) under the leadership of Arc. Sonny Echono is unrelenting in its quest to boost research in Nigerian tertiary education.
As part of such commitment, Echono earlier in the year, constituted a National Contact Point (NCP) for the implementation of a partnership with African Union (AU) and European Union (EU) on enhancement of research and innovations in the nation’s higher institution.
The NCP serves as a channel for information dissemination on available opportunities on research and development.
Echono added that NCP was initiated to provide researchers with necessary information on various workshops.
He said: “TETFund, being an intervention agency for public tertiary institutions in Nigeria, has the mandate to facilitate the institutionalisation of Research and Development in tertiary institutions to support development.”
Frowning that Nigeria has not been able to participate effectively in the EU research funding framework programme, Echono noted that the Fund has initiated the process to ensure that researchers from Nigerian higher institutions of learning participate effectively in the EU Research and Innovation framework programme tagged the Horizon Europe.
He also stated that the Fund would be providing further support to the NCP network to enable it mobilise Nigerian research community effectively to benefit from the platform and training programmes to be deployed by the EU delegation.
The Fund under Echono has, in a very short period, initiated several interventions aimed at resuscitating research activities in the nation’s tertiary institutions, and the interventions are intended to facilitate cutting -edged research that will contribute to national developmental efforts as well as tackle global challenges.
Noting that the Fund has supported members of NCP to participate in the AU-EU Agenda Stakeholders Event held in Nairobi, Kenya in November 2022, the Executive Secretary stated that participants would further be supported to execute the mandate of mobilising Nigerian researchers to respond to calls arising from Horizon Europe.
He added: “TETFund is supporting research groups from various Nigerian universities through provision of training and mentoring on writing successful grant applications, project management, partnership and consortia development to further complement and extend the support being made available by EU delegate.
“Currently, the Fund has released a request for expression of interest for Nigerian researchers and research Teams. TETFUND will spearhead the formation of a bilateral agreement on research and innovation between Nigeria and the EU, under the auspices of the Ministry of Education and in collaboration with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and that of Science and Technology and Innovation.”
Speaking for the Ministry of Science and Technology, the Permanent Secretary, Ms. Monisola Udoh, held that the ministry was also committed to fostering and supporting the collaboration of the Horizon Europe and Nigerian National Contact Point network.
She, however, hoped that Nigeria would feature much more prominently than it did in the last circle.
“I am looking forward to working collaboratively with the focal persons’ network to push the agenda of Nigeria, which is to change the narrative of Nigeria being a consumer nation to a productive nation; even in the area of knowledge creation.
“And we cannot create good knowledge if we don’t engage in research. The whole essence of this gathering is about supporting R&D for national development and I am looking forward to a situation where Nigeria can benefit from this operation and our researchers better empowered to do relevant research for national development.
“We need to focus on local problems that are basically human problems and if we are able to get the solution right here, Nigeria may become the provider of solution that will address humanity issues globally.
“So, I equally want to say that the Ministry has about 17 agencies and under each of the agencies, we have between five and 12 of research institutes that are being supervised by these agencies.
“I want to believe that we can take this network along as we develop the programmes that this collaboration will be supporting going forward so that we can truly participate and get these research institutes to be empowered to do the research they are set out to do, which will bring progress to Nigeria, other African countries and the rest of the world.”
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