The Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University (ATBU) Bauchi has commenced a two-day capacity building of 100 academics on Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund)’s National Research Fund proposal writing and development.

Speaking during the opening of the training on Tuesday, Prof. Ibrahim Garba, the Vice Chancellor of the institution charged the trainees to work hard to secure reasonable slots from the 200 allocated to higher institutions in the North.

According to him, the training was for academics whose 30 concept notes have been approved by TETfund.

He called on them to work towards securing maximum slots from the pool of 200 allocated to institutions in the North under the Tertiary Education Trust Fund, TETfund National Research Fund NRF Proposal Development.

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Represented by Prof. Muhammad AbdulAzeez, immediate past VC of the institution, Garba said the National Research Fund is secured on merit hence the need for them to be highly attentive throughout the training to expand the notes to better proposals.

He said the training was organised in order to effect all the necessary corrections on the developed concept notes for them to scale through the rigorous screening process of securing the research grant.

Earlier, the Director Research, Innovation and Development, Prof. Fatima Sawa who congratulated all the participants for passing through all the hurdles to write the concept notes, urged them to support each other and brainstorm towards elevating the institution’s ranking by winning as many NRF slots as possible.

She said that the two-day training was organised for 100 academics from the faculties of Agriculture, Management Technology, Engineering, Environmental Technology, Computing.

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Others, she said included Science, Directorate of Distance Learning and the TETFund Sustainable Procurement, Environmental and Social Standards (SPESSE) Project, Centre of Excellence.

Sawa said TETfund NRF is designed to support research across multiple thematic areas, enhance innovation and capacity building in Nigerian institutions and provide funding for impactful research with national relevance.

“The NRF grant is meant to motivate staff and encourage them to conduct impactful projects that will impact directly on the society.

“On the basis of that, they brought out a guideline. First of all, you have to develop a concept note, which is sent to TETFund, and they have a team of experts who normally assess these concept notes.

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“Then, out of the lots that have been submitted, they screen out those that are not good enough, and then they respond to the ones that are successful”.

“This year, we were able to have 30 successful concept notes. But that is the first step. The second step is for us to develop the proposal fully, and then it will be subjected to another set of screening”, she explained.

While presenting a paper on Marking Scheme for the Proposal, the Deputy Director RI&D, Prof. Balarabe Yushau, observed that for the research proposal to scale through, it must be within the specific word limits, have quality team members with track record, good and detailed budget with specified activities and timeline for execution.

Similarly, Prof. Muhammad AbdulAzeez Advised the institution to expand its training on research proposals to other faculties for more inclusion and access to local and international grants.

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He emphasised the need to integrate more facilities into the training, adding that the wider the area of coverage in terms of fields of study, the more opportunities for the institution to achieve groundbreaking discoveries and ranking among higher institutions of learning.

“I want other faculties also to come in, to buy into this project. The NRF is just trying to tell you that you have a project that you now develop and the finances from TETfund, and these projects are projects that are helping the community.

“If you help the community, that is a kind of reason for setting up a university in any place. It is trying to solve community problems”, he said.

He called on the participants and other academics to use their brain towards getting out of the current economic situation by initiating research ideas to attract funding.

He expressed happiness with the number of concept notes that scaled through the TETfund scrutiny this year, hoping that the development would lead to the securing of more research grants by the university.