The Federal Government has established the Tertiary Institutions National Laureate Prize, with an initial annual fund of N365 million, to reward outstanding research, innovation, and intellectual excellence in Nigeria’s tertiary institutions.
Minister of Education, Dr. Tunji Alausa, said the prize was designed to reposition scholarship and research as critical drivers of national development.
Alausa spoke in Abuja during a press briefing on Wednesday where he outlined the objectives of the initiative.
The minister had inaugurated the Tertiary Institutions National Laureate Prize Committee and charged it with providing the strategic direction, governance and integrity required to ensure the credibility and sustainability of the initiative.
According to him, the prize, being jointly implemented by the Federal Ministry of Education and the Nigeria Education Repository and Databank, NERD, would provide a structured national platform for identifying and rewarding exceptional academic research with potential for innovation, commercialisation, industrial application and national development.
He said the initiative was necessary because Nigeria’s existing reward systems had not sufficiently recognised the remarkable research and innovations being produced by students and academics across the country.
“Scholarship matters; research matters; innovation matters; and intellectual excellence deserves a prominent place in our national consciousness,” the minister said.
The proposed annual prize pool will cover different categories of academic work, including undergraduate dissertations with strong commercial potential, exceptional master’s theses and doctoral theses with clear industrial and developmental applications.
The initiative will also feature special prizes for outstanding contributions 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 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 helped prevent the 2014 Ebola outbreak from becoming a national catastrophe.
Alausa said the credibility of the award would depend largely on the integrity of its selection process, stressing that entries would be subjected to a transparent, competitive and merit-driven process insulated from political, institutional and personal influence.
He added that participation and submission of academic reports would conform with the National Policy on the Nigeria Education Repository and Databank, thereby strengthening the integrity, accessibility and preservation of Nigeria’s intellectual output.
The minister described the prize as more than an awards programme, saying it was intended to change how Nigerian students and researchers perceive scholarship, innovation and academic excellence.
He said the government wanted undergraduate innovators to see commercial opportunities in their inventions, master’s students to know that research into national challenges was valued, and doctoral researchers to have clearer pathways from academic work to industrial application, enterprise creation and national development.
“Ultimately, we must build an education system that does not simply produce certificates but produces solutions, innovations, enterprises and measurable national value,” Alausa said.
He noted that nations that would succeed in the 21st century would be those capable of systematically transforming knowledge into solutions, research into enterprise and intellectual capital into economic and industrial value.
The minister said the National Laureate Prize was therefore a deliberate national statement that researchers, scholars and innovators deserved recognition and that the intellectual capacity of Nigerian youths must be deliberately harnessed for national development.
He reiterated the Federal Government’s commitment, under President Tinubu’s leadership, to building an education system capable of developing the knowledge, skills, creativity and innovation required to drive Nigeria’s economic transformation and global competitiveness.
