President Muhammadu Buhari, on Wednesday, approved the sum of N8.5 billion for the conduct of groundbreaking research in medicine and other areas in 2021.
The approval was done under the National Research Fund, NRF, scheme funded by the Tertiary Education Trust, TETFund.
This was confirmed by the Executive Secretary of TETFund, Prof Suleiman Bogoro, during a 3-Day Workshop for Directors of Research and Development of public universities in Nigeria held at the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, Training Institute, Maitama, Abuja.
Bogoro said, “With your support, I made a case to the board of trustees to increase the NRF research grants, from initially we had seed money of N3 billion but it got exhausted and N1billion was added between 2016 and 2019.
“But when I came, I decided to revolutionise it and I said it is not a question of seed money, let it be annual money. And that is why I made a case for N5 billion in 2019 alone. in 2020 we raised it to N7.5 billion.
“This year, Mr President has approved another N7.5 billion but, guess what, with additional N1 billion that we intend to do groundbreaking research around medicine even in respect of the Covid-19 challenge.”