Modupe Gbadeyanka
By Modupe Gbadeyanka
The importance of human capital to any society has been stressed by the Vice-Chancellor of the Nile University, Abuja, Professor Osman Nuri Aras.
Mr Aras described it as one of the most important resources in any society, noting that it was because of its importance that the institution’s team paid a courtesy visit to the Petroleum Technology Development Fund (PTDF).
The PTDF is a reputed for training the skills development needs for the oil and gas industry in Nigeria as well as other related sectors.
The organisation has over the years invested in the training of manpower for the energy sector through scholarship and other programmes.
For the university, this is an area it intends to work together with the oil agency to bring economic growth to the nation currently in recession.
The Vice-Chancellor informed the Executive Secretary of PTDF, Mr Bello Aliyu Gusau, that collaboration between both parties would benefit the sector and Nigeria at large.
According to him, Nile University was impressed with the achievements of PTDF and would like to key into having already established a similar relationship with many public and private institutions across the country.
In his remarks, Mr Gusau said the school had come at the right time the fund was developing a policy for the states and private universities.
He assured the university’s delegation that once the agency perfects its policies on the matter, Nile University would be one of those to be partnered with its capacity-building educational programmes and initiatives.
According to him, “What you are talking about is not out of place, but we also need to perfect the policy to address what we expect from states and private universities.
“As a sponsoring institution, we also consider other things from the universities like completion period in addition to quality and substance.”
However, he thanked the team for the visit, assuring the school that it was interested in working together with institutions interested in the development of human resources.
“I am sure you are aware that for quite some time, we have focused our attention on training Nigerians in many countries across the globe but in the last few years, we have decided to refocus our attention towards Nigerian universities.
“The numbers are changing, this year alone; the scholarship in Nigerian universities is about seven times higher than the number of those going out of the country.
“Our hope is that gradually we will redirect the traffic away from foreign to Nigerian universities,” he told his visitors.
