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

Kasim Sumaina in Abuja 

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

Under the French Embassy Fund (FEF), the project 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 at the French Embassy, Thierry Valentin, said that 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 that it would benefit not only the university communities but all the areas where such an initiative is being implemented.

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

One of the beneficiary universities, the University of Delta, Agbor, pledged to implement its plastic waste management project promptly. The Vice-Chancellor, Stella Chiemeke, emphasised the project’s importance for both the university and the local community.

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