Jane Salihu
The Federal Government has unveiled plans to use the newly established Tertiary Institutions National Laureate Prize to bridge the gap between academic research and real-world solutions, industrial development and job creation in Nigeria.
The Minister of Education, Dr. Maruf Olatunji Alausa, CON, disclosed this while speaking on the initiative, which is designed to recognise and reward outstanding research, innovation and intellectual excellence across Nigeria’s tertiary institutions.
Alausa said the prize was not conceived as merely another awards programme, but as a deliberate strategy to change how Nigerians perceive scholarship and encourage students and researchers to translate knowledge into innovations, enterprises and solutions to national challenges.
According to him, the initiative will provide a structured national platform for identifying exceptional academic research with potential for commercialisation, industrial application and national development.
He disclosed that an annual prize pool of approximately ₦365 million is envisaged for various categories of outstanding academic work, including undergraduate dissertations with strong commercial potential, exceptional Master’s theses and Ph.D. theses with clear industrial and developmental applications.
The Minister also announced that special prizes would be awarded in critical fields such as Engineering and Technology, Medicine and Health Sciences, Arts and Social Sciences, Agriculture, Law and Teaching Innovation.
One of the special recognitions, he said, would be the Dr. Stella Adadevoh Prize for Medicine and Medical Innovation, established in honour of the late physician whose courage and professional sacrifice played a significant role in preventing the 2014 Ebola outbreak from escalating into a national catastrophe.
Alausa said the Federal Ministry of Education had inaugurated the Tertiary Institutions National Laureate Prize Committee to provide strategic direction, governance and integrity for the implementation of the programme.
He stressed that the credibility of the prize would depend largely on the integrity of its selection process, assuring that the process would be transparent, competitive and merit-driven, without political, institutional or personal interference.
“Excellence must be the determining factor,” the Minister said.
He added that participation and submission of academic works would conform with the National Policy on the Nigeria Education Repository and Databank (NERD), strengthening the preservation, accessibility and integrity of Nigeria’s intellectual output.
The Minister said the initiative was part of the Renewed Hope Agenda of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu in the education sector and was being jointly implemented by the Nigeria Education Repository and Databank and the Federal Ministry of Education.
He explained that the government’s objective was to create a system where an undergraduate with a commercially viable innovation could see a future in it, while Master’s and doctoral researchers would have clearer pathways for transforming their academic work into industrial applications, enterprises and solutions.
Alausa maintained that Nigeria’s education system must move beyond the production of certificates to producing “solutions, innovations, enterprises and measurable national value.”
He argued that the competitiveness of nations in the 21st century would increasingly depend on their ability to transform knowledge into practical solutions and intellectual capital into economic and industrial value.
The Minister said the National Laureate Prize was therefore a national statement that scholars, researchers and innovators matter, stressing that Nigeria’s intellectual institutions and research efforts deserved greater national recognition.
He reaffirmed the Federal Government’s commitment to developing an education system capable of equipping young Nigerians with the knowledge, skills, creativity and innovative capacity required to drive economic transformation and enhance the country’s global competitiveness.
The initiative, he said, would ultimately help build a Nigeria where excellence is recognised, scholarship is celebrated and innovation is rewarded, while deliberately harnessing the intellectual capacity of young Nigerians for national development.
