The Petroleum Technology Development Fund, on Monday, commenced the 2025 selection interview for over 5,000 candidates shortlisted for its highly competitive Overseas Scholarship Scheme across six designated centres nationwide.

The shortlisted candidates emerged from a pool of more than 29,000 applicants who applied for the MSc and PhD awards tenable in top universities in the United Kingdom, France, Germany, and Malaysia, amongst other countries.

Interview sessions are simultaneously ongoing in Abuja, Port Harcourt, Ibadan, Enugu, Bauchi, and Kaduna, each representing Nigeria’s six geopolitical zones. The exercise is being supervised by academic professionals, including professors and researchers, appointed as panellists.

Speaking during a meeting with panellists at the formal launch of the interview process in Abuja, the Deputy General Manager, Education and Training, Bello Mustapha, who represented the Executive Secretary of the Fund, reaffirmed PTDF’s commitment to fairness, transparency, and merit in the selection of successful candidates.

“This exercise is critical to our mandate of building capacity in Nigeria’s oil and gas industry,” Mustapha said. “We cannot afford to let it be undermined by personal interests or carelessness.

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“Panel members are expected to evaluate candidates based on predetermined criteria, including academic performance, research potential, leadership qualities, and personal suitability for overseas studies. The exercise has been structured to efficiently deal with a high number of applicants and to satisfy federal character principles.”

He warned that unethical conduct such as lobbying for candidates, tampering with scores, or group scoring would attract strict sanctions. “Professionalism and integrity are non-negotiable,” he stressed.

“Any violation may lead to disqualification of the candidate and blacklisting of the panellist involved.”

Mustafa also announced the official rollout of a new split-site PhD programme, under which PTDF-sponsored PhD candidates in the UK will now complete part of their studies at the Fund’s College of Petroleum and Energy Studies in Kaduna, and the rest in partner institutions abroad.

“These are Robert Gordon University, University of Portsmouth, and University of Strathclyde,” he said. “The arrangement will save costs, strengthen local capacity, and promote joint supervision of research.”

In a bid to prevent bias and inefficiencies observed in past cycles, the Fund has introduced stricter digital scoring templates.

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According to Mustafa, only subjects relevant to each candidate’s proposed course of study are now eligible for scoring, while irrelevant subjects like Civic Education or local languages have been removed from the system.

Panellists are required to assess academic qualifications, research potential, leadership capacity, and overall suitability of each candidate independently, without discussing scores or influencing one another.

Also speaking, the Head of the Overseas Scholarship Scheme, Bolanle Kehinde Agboola, confirmed that about 5,000 candidates were shortlisted from over 29,000 applications submitted for the 2025/2026 academic cycle.

She explained that a robust digital system was used to assign initial scores based on information provided in the application forms, which were then manually verified against uploaded credentials.

She said, “Today, we are here for the interview exercise to select candidates for the award of the PTDF Overseas Scholarship Scheme for the year 2025/26. Candidates have arrived, and panellists have been briefed.

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“First and foremost, this scheme has been ongoing for about 25 years now and over the years, one thing PTDF is known for is integrity, transparency and fairness in the scholarship award. We have different stages of shortlisting and it is a very rigorous and robust process.

“We have put a system in place, electronically that would help allocate points based on information put in the application by students. After this, we physically check the information put in the application form and cross-check it with the certificate uploaded.”

Agboola clarified that the final number of awardees would be determined by the PTDF management after the interviews are concluded.

“This year, we had over 29,000 applications from interested candidates. Out of which, we shortlisted about 5,000 candidates, who would be taking the interview nationwide. But the number to be awarded the scholarship will be decided by the management, and it hasn’t been decided.”

The PTDF Overseas Scholarship is a government-funded education scheme targeted at developing a skilled workforce for the energy sector by training Nigerians in key technical and managerial disciplines abroad.

The interviews are expected to run for weeks, and all shortlisted candidates are required to undergo one-on-one assessments in compliance with federal character principles.