Centre Doles Out N20m to Support Academic Research, Entrepreneurship Across 55 Tertiary Institutions

Oluchi Chibuzor

The Grooming Centre (GC) in an effort to promote linkage between the industry and academics in the country has doled out N20 million to 150 students across 55 tertiary institutions.
This is after 513 proposals were screened to 359 due to plagiarism and also meeting application’s critical indicators like thematic grant research areas, data-driven result and contextual relevance.

Speaking at the award ceremony in Lagos, recently, the Chief Executive Officer, Grooming Centre, Dr. Godwin Nwabunka, said more youths should become more innovative and learn how to translate challenges to opportunities.
According to him, “For me, how do we define entrepreneurship? You learn the skills, become more innovative. You become more inquisitive on how you can translate what you see to action.

“So, you train your eyes to see what other people cannot see. People just pass by and see nothing. You learn to translate every challenge into an opportunity. Every challenge is an opportunity.
“So, for us the scholarship grants of about N20m to 150 students (100 undergraduate and 50 postgraduate) across 55 tertiary institutions is to motivate research that would produce champions for us.
“And we are hoping that they become like champions for us so that their colleagues and peers and institutions will hear about this undergraduate scheme and then be able to work with it.
“Entrepreneurship is the major thing that we are promoting so that ideas can be translated into valuable services and products.”

He however promised to ensure that recipients are closely linked to an ecosystem for mentoring.
“So, we hope that the Centre for Research in Enterprise and Action in Management (CREM) will be working very closely with the institutions to see what we are doing. We are trying to change the narrative in terms of education.
“With our university coming on board that is focused mostly on entrepreneurship, on innovation, on research and development, so that truly the academia and industry can meet,” the chairman said.
On his side, the guest lecturer and Prof. of Criminology, Faculty of Social Sciences, LASU, Prof. Adedeji Oyenuga, said entrepreneurship guarantees employment for any youths who can leverage technological tools available for them.

“So, imagine entrepreneurship to guarantee employment for younger people, and the opportunities are there. They have a lot more opportunities than people who were of their age before the year 2000 had,” he added.