France Awards €250,000 to Five Nigerian Tertiary Institutions to Combat Plastic Pollution

Kasim Sumaina in Abuja 

The French government has awarded the sum of €250,000 to five tertiary institutions in Nigeria to help combat plastic pollution in the country.

The project, under the French Embassy Fund (FEF), was part of the French government’s global effort to encourage proper plastic waste management and young Nigerian researchers to develop innovative ideas for a safer environment.

At the official inauguration of the FEF Waste Management in Nigerian Campuses Project in Abuja, the Head of Cooperation and Cultural Affairs in the French Embassy, Thierry Valentin, said the idea was to show to the global community that with little or no financial resources, the world could still rid its environment of plastic waste.

Valentin said: “We had a lot of good projects. These five have been selected because of their excellence. They are all very good projects as scientific projects and result-oriented projects.

“We want to face the huge question of plastic pollution here in Nigeria. The wish is to show with a few examples that it can work. We want to showcase good solutions with few resources.”

Valentin described the project as revolutionary, saying it would not only benefit the university communities but all the areas where such an initiative is being implemented.

Similarly, the Executive Secretary of the Nigerian Universities Commission (NUC), Mr. Chris Maiyaki, described the feat as a sweet victory for Nigerian universities due to what he termed as a perceived impression about a decline in the intellectual space affecting Nigerian universities and graduates.

“At moments like this, we have cause to be proud of our university brand because it’s a huge recognition of the tremendous work that our research has continued to render, sometimes underreported and for me this is a moment of joy.

“It’s a game-changing opportunity to have the French government support research along the specifics of plastic waste disposal. It is a contribution to resuscitating the research culture at our universities because research is at the heart of your existence as a university,” he said.

One of the beneficiary universities, the University of Delta State, Agbor, pledged to implement its plastic waste management project promptly.

The Vice-Chancellor of the university, Stella Chiemeke, emphasised the project’s importance for both the university and the local community.

According to Chiemeke, “Delta State University, you know, the area is erosion prone, and then, you know, in an institution, you see a lot of wastes, like plastic wastes. And when there is heavy downpour, you see that all the drains are filled up with all these plastic wastes.

“It is really an honour that we were invited, a lot of universities were invited to write research proposals on the plastic waste management. We are going to go back now to start the work in earnest to ensure that we have a clean campus, a clean environment, and then the community at large also benefit from the project.” 

The benefiting tertiary institutions are Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU), Ile-Ife; Alex Ekwueme Funai University, Ebonyi; Delta State University, Agbor; University of Calabar; and the Yaba College of Technology, Akoka, Lagos.

In June 2024, the embassy launched a plastic waste management project worth €753,000 to help universities across Nigeria develop innovative, adaptive and sustainable project ideas addressing plastic pollution.