FCET Ekiadolor, Iwemi Sign MoU To Boost Academic Digitisation

The Federal College of Education, Technical (FCET), Ekiadolor has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Retail Development and Investment Company Limited (RDIC), owners of Iwemi Engine in a strategic move to enhance academic visibility and embrace digital innovation,

The partnership, officially sealed on Friday, April 4, 2025 aims at providing students and staff of the institution an avenue to publish academic contents for global access and recognition. A key component of the agreement is the creation of an indexing platform for the college, which will assist the college to retrieve research materials conducted within the college with a click of a button.

This indexing platform solves the challenge of project topic duplication. Furthermore, the college can now have a publishing press where academic textbooks, journals, theses and dissertations are published free for lecturers of the institution.

 Speaking during the MOU signing event, Provost of FCET, Dr. Emmanuel Asagha, said the partnership is aimed at driving academic excellence through easy access to information that digitization would provide.

He expressed delight with the platform as lecturers can now confidently write quality text books and instructional materials knowing that their effort will be hugely compensated through Iwemi’s robust royalty system.

“This event is epochal in our quest for academic excellence in our college. Our partnership with RDIC will not only make for easy access to educational content for our students and academic staff through online storage of thesis, dissertations and other publications, but will also boost the school’s revenue generation, completely eliminate intellectual property loss, facilitate ease of reference to specific project materials and provide global visibility of the school’s project work to multinational companies and project financiers,” Asagha said.

He  promised to give the partnership all the necessary support to ensure that it succeeded in its objectives and urged members of the college community to avail themselves of the opportunity the partnership offered them to enrich their academic experience.

Also speaking at the signing event, Librarian of the College, Dr. Tony Obaseki, expressed the hope about the potential of the agreement to boost the FCET’s webometric ranking.

“The FCET is repositioning to become a trailblazer in the academic world. The college is refining its education processes in order to produce graduates who are highly skilled, who will make immediate impact in the various industries where they are employed.”

“This agreement, which is another first of its kind in the history of this country, will go a long way in projecting this citadel of knowledge in the best light and will earn it a place of pride amongst its peers locally and internationally,” he said.

Project Director of Iwemi, Ejimofor Akah,  expressed delight at the formalisation of the partnership and pledged to deliver on the expectations of the college, saying: “I am delighted to be part of this partnership between FCET, Ekiadolor and RDIC.

 “I convey our organisation’s commitment to providing quality and timely delivery of the services which we have been appointed to provide in such a manner as would bring about overall excellence and prosperity to the college.”

On iwemiresearch.org, Akah said: “Our platform engine enables lecturers to publish their academic textbooks, teaching aids and peer-reviewed faculty journals within minutes. The lecturers determine the sale price of their content, and on a successful sale, our partnership with Zenith Bank and Fidelity Bank Plc ensures that lecturers’ royalties are paid within 48 hours.

“Our team will also work with the college to scan and digitize project work submitted from inception till date and will also assist in preparing these records in a format that can be accessible on iwemiresearch.org or any database.”