The Petroleum Technology Development Fund (PTDF) has said that it has trained 9,659 Nigerians on its overseas and in-country scholarships since its establishment.
The Executive Secretary of the PTDF, Dr Bello Gusau, said on Monday that the beneficiaries of these gesture had first degrees as well as master’s and doctoral degrees.
According to Gusau, PTDF, under its fund’s strategic direction, provided these respective scholarships to applicants in the United Kingdom, Germany, France, China and Malaysia.
He added that the majority of the beneficiaries are in all major disciplines related to oil and gas and energy industries, including engineering, geosciences, environmental studies, computing and management.
“This has enhanced the upward shift of local content contribution to the industry, facilitated knowledge transfer and driven the development of indigenous research and the growth of Nigerian companies,” Gusau said.
He noted that the utmost desire of the fund was for the knowledge acquired to be transferred to others, both in the public and private sectors so as to develop specialised indigenous human capital expected to take over from the expatriates.
The PTDF boss also said that the fund had committed hundreds of millions of dollars to sponsoring Nigerians over the years on various training programmes while striving to achieve its mandate since its inception in 2002.
Information related to the fund’s spending, as detailed in our audited accounts, can be accessed by any interested party under the provisions of the Public Information Act and other extant regulations” .
