The Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund) has awarded N7.5 billion to 174 research teams under its National Research Fund (NRF).
The Federal University of Technology, Owerri (FUTO), secured 11 grants to place second among institutions with the highest number of successful applications.
A former Vice Chancellor of FUTO, Prof. Francis Chukwuemeka Eze, announced this in his seventh valedictory lecture, titled: “Walking the FUTO Journey: A Physicist’s Reflections on Scholarship, Leadership,” in which he reflected on research funding, institutional development, and his leadership of the university from 2016 to 2021.
Eze said the individual grants ranged from N13.69 million to N49.98 million, describing TETFund’s interventions as critical to the survival and development of technology-driven universities whose laboratory-based programmes require huge investments.
“It is noteworthy that FUTO took the second position among all the universities that competed for the NRF grants. I congratulate FUTO on this laudable achievement. I have no doubt whatsoever that FUTO will do even better in the next cycles,” Eze said.
The former vice chancellor recalled that his administration established the Office of the Deputy Vice Chancellor (Research, Development and Innovation) to strengthen research coordination, while encouraging academics to move from isolated projects to collaborative and problem-driven research.
“We insisted that publications alone were not enough and that knowledge must travel from laboratory to marketplace,” he said.
Eze said the approach contributed to advances in renewable energy, materials science, environmental science, management, ICT, agricultural science and technology, as well as increased national and international research collaborations.
The former vice chancellor also highlighted FUTO’s success in attracting major centres of excellence, including the World Bank-assisted Africa Centre of Excellence for Future Energies and Electrochemical Systems, the National Centre of Excellence in Sustainable Procurement, Environmental and Social Standards, the Centre of Excellence on Local Materials Substitution and the Nigerian Communications Commission Professorial Chair on ICT.
The former VC said the centres have strengthened FUTO’s research output and international visibility, while the university has also expanded academically through the creation of three new schools, re-establishment of the School of Business and Management Studies, the establishment of a College of Medicine and the introduction of about 18 academic programmes.
He urged the FUTO management to diversify its revenue sources without compromising academic standards, identifying industry-funded research centres and chairs, technology incubation centres, consultancy services and endowment schemes as possible avenues.
“For technological universities, these interventions are not supplementary; they are existential,” he said.
The institution’s Vice Chancellor, Prof. Ikechukwu Nosike Dozie, thanked Eze for delivering the valedictory lecture.
The VC described the occasion as an opportunity to reflect on FUTO’s institutional journey.
He promised that his administration would build on the achievements of previous administrations and further expand the university’s research, academic and technological frontiers.
Dozie pledged that the achievements recorded under the previous administration would not be abandoned but consolidated and expanded as part of his administration’s effort to move FUTO to greater heights.
The vice chancellor, who recently assumed office as the university’s ninth substantive helmsman, pledged to leave FUTO better than he found it, stressing the institution’s capacity for research, innovation and strategic partnerships.
