Four doctoral degree students and 146 others, comprising 46 graduates and 100 undergraduates, have befitted from this year’s Grooming Centre university scholarship awards.
The final-year students, who are from over 70 public and private universities, polytechnics, and colleges of education in the country, were given a total sum of N20 million all together for their research projects.
The money was given to them on Friday, November 15, at the award presentation held at the corporate headquarters of the organisation in Lagos.
While each of the postgraduate students received a sum of N200,000, their undergraduate counterparts received N100,000.
Speaking at the event, the CEO\Founder of Grooming Centre Nigeria, a micro financial institution, Dr Godwin Nwabunka, said that Nigeria is a large market with many business opportunities, but only those with entrepreneurial and creative spirit could provide the products and services capable of satisfying the people’s needs to maximise profit and better the society.
He maintained that any challenge in communities near or far is an opportunity that could be turned into a fortune by people with innovation and entrepreneurial spirit.
He pointed out that such a category of youths in schools is the target of the grooming centre to help them to create wealth, attain financial freedom, and even become employers of labour rather than job seekers upon graduation.
Nwabunka said many youths are out there who need only a small push to come out of poverty, and that is why Grooming Centre is ready to support such individual students through the research grants.
He mentioned that he is particularly happy that many more youths in the country are now embracing the vision, which he said is reflected in the growing number of applicants with valuable research projects seeking sponsors each year.
According to him, this edition, which is the sixth in the series, is the first since the inception of the scholarship award that the centre will have the full number of successful applicants, which is 150 for sponsorship.
“We started with 25 persons six years ago, and now we have 393 beneficiaries so far as of today,” he noted, adding, “This shows that more of our youths are now thinking outside the box, an indication that there is great hope for a better Nigeria.”
While promising that the centre would do an upward review of the number of beneficiaries and monetary value for more impact, Nwabunka urged all the beneficiaries to remain focused on their studies.
Giving insight into the scheme, the technical committee member, Dr Abraham Okpe, explained that the annual non-refundable grant is part of the social intervention initiatives of the Centre on Education to encourage and boost evidence-based research activities and knowledge among tertiary school students in critical economic areas that include social enterprise, microfinance, inclusive finance, rural development, micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs), women in development, and other areas that aim at lifting people out of poverty.
He said the centre received better applications this year, making the selection process very tight.
According to him, we first screened 513 applications to 359 before we finally settled for the best 150 across the two categories.
He declared that 10 parameters were used for grading, listing relevance, originality, marketability, and sustainability of ideas as part of them.
Also speaking, the head of the special project, Grooming Centre, Egulefu Chikezie, said the centre believes that so many university students in the country would want to carry out research works on problems-solved issues that are impactful to the economy but have no money, hence the purpose of the research grants to support them.
He noted that what concerns the centre is for beneficiaries of the grants to create wealth with their projects and impact society and not about their schools, religion, or states of origin.
Chikezie emphasised that the winning research projects with the grants being managed by the Centre for Research in Enterprise and Action in Management (CREM) are focused on issues relevant to the Nigerian context, practical, innovative, and capable of promoting any of the critical economic areas of interest in the Nigerian space.
Delivering a keynote speech at the event, guest speaker and a professor of sociology at the Lagos State University (LASU), Ojo, Adedeji Oyenuga, stressed the importance of financial inclusion to youths across age, status, and location to acquire knowledge and requisite skills and do earn income.
He said poverty is a global problem, but it is easier in developed countries such as the US and China for people to get out of it than in developing countries like Nigeria, where the inequality gap between the rich and the poor is wider.
Speaking on “Unlocking the potentials of research in advancing financial inclusion towards lifting people out of poverty,” the don commended the Grooming Centre for this intervention, saying the effort would greatly boost wealth creation in the country.
Sharing their experiences with the Nigerian Tribune, some of the beneficiaries revealed that the grants are a great relief to them and their parents.
The duo of ItunuOluwa Ibikun, who is a 400-level marketing student at LASU, and Zulaikha Idris, a 500-level pharmacy student at the Olabisi Onabanjo University, Ago Iwoye, said they were excited to win the grant, adding that it would go a long way to lessen their financial burdens.
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