By Excellence Oseose
The Federal Government has unveiled plans to commit about N365 million annually to reward outstanding academic research, innovation and intellectual excellence across Nigeria’s tertiary institutions.
The initiative, under the Tertiary Institutions National Laureate Prize, is aimed at strengthening the country’s culture of scholarship and innovation while ensuring that exceptional academic achievements receive national recognition.
Minister of Education, Dr. Maruf Olatunji Alausa, disclosed this while speaking on the objectives of the prize during a press conference on Wednesday in Abuja, noting that it would provide a structured national platform for identifying and rewarding research with potential for innovation, commercialisation, industrial application and national development.
Alausa said the initiative was necessary to address what he described as a long-standing gap in the recognition of remarkable research and innovations emerging from Nigerian universities and other tertiary institutions.
“For many years, our national attention and reward system has not sufficiently celebrated the remarkable work taking place in our universities and other tertiary institutions,” he said.
According to the minister, the annual prize pool would cover various categories of outstanding academic work, including undergraduate dissertations with strong commercial potential, exceptional Master’s theses and doctoral research with clear industrial and developmental applications.
He added that special prizes would recognise outstanding contributions in Engineering and Technology, Medicine and Health Sciences, Arts and Social Sciences, Agriculture, Law and Teaching Innovation.
One of the special awards will be the Dr. Stella Adadevoh Prize for Medicine and Medical Innovation, established in honour of the late physician whose courage and professional sacrifice contributed significantly to Nigeria’s containment of the 2014 Ebola outbreak.
Alausa stressed that the credibility of the prize would depend on the integrity of its selection process, assuring that the exercise would be transparent, competitive and merit-driven, without political, institutional or personal interference.
“Excellence will be the determining factor,” he said.
The Minister said the initiative formed part of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s broader agenda to transform the education sector by positioning knowledge, skills, creativity and innovation as drivers of economic development.
He explained that the prize was not merely an award programme but an instrument for encouraging Nigerian students and researchers to pursue work capable of producing practical solutions, innovations, enterprises and measurable national value.
“The innovator matters, the scholar matters, the researcher matters, and the work of our graduates and intellectual institutions deserve national celebration,” Alausa said.
The National Laureate Prize is being implemented jointly by the Federal Ministry of Education and the Nigeria Educational Research and Development Council (NERDC).
Abuja Times reports that the Minister expressed confidence that the initiative would help create a national environment where academic excellence is recognised, scholarship celebrated and innovation rewarded.