The Nigerian National Merit Award (NNMA) has entered into partnership with the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund) to initiate projects and research programmes that would benefit universities and other tertiary institutions in the country.
This was contained in a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) which was reached during a meeting with the chairman, Governing Board of the NNMA, Prof. Shekarau Yakubu Aku and his TETFund counterpart, the executive secretary, Prof. Suleiman Elias Bogoro recently in Abuja.
According to a statement issued Wednesday by the acting secretary of the NNMA, Mr. Namadi Ibrahim, the MoU was a fall-out of the 2019 forum held between the agencies tagged, “The Missing Links in the 20 years of Democracy in Nigeria: Think Tanks as Catalysts for Development.”
The statement read in part, “Part of the MoU includes the establishment of a state-of-the-art library with high-tech resources to enable Nigerian scholars and researchers to work on issues of national and international development.
“The organisation also agreed to introduce a policy research group in partnership with public universities or other TETFund benefitting institutions as approved by the NNMA for this development.
“Other aspects of the agreement include the publication and distribution of a compendium of ideas and strategic policies emanating from the annual forums.
A policy group to be known as the ‘Think Tank Group’ will soon be set up by the two agencies to fine tune other key areas of the MoU.”
At the event, the TETFund boss Bogoro gave the assurance that the proposal for sponsorship as contained in the MoU had been considered and adequate funding of the proposed projects was assured.
In his remarks, NNMA’s Aku expressed delight over the new consolidated affiliation between the NNMA and TETFund and appreciated Bogoro for the gesture.
Speaking further, Bogoro said his passion for research and development remained undaunted, adding that “the most competitive economies of the world are those that have placed intellectualism and education as well as productive problem solving research at the centre of the instrumentality of achieving their aims and objectives.”
