PTDF: 16,000 Nigerians Trained to Fill Nigeria’s Oil, Gas Sector Needs

Blessing Ibunge in Port Harcourt

The Petroleum Technology Development Fund (PTDF) has said that it has trained 16,000 Nigerians to fill the county’s oil and gas needs gap. This comes as the body has commenced screening of PhD candidates for its 2025/2026 overseas scholarship program academic session.

The programme, which is a federal government initiative to fill the needs gap in the oil and gas sector, is in line with the local content act.

Speaking with journalists in Port Harcourt during the screening held at the PTDF Training Centre, yesterday, the Lead, PTDF PhD oversea scholarship in Port Harcourt, Ere Iyalla, said the scheme has trained over 16,000 Nigerians since its commencement.

He mentioned that the agenda of the federal government, especially in the oil and gas industry is to develop local content and one of the ways is to build human and institutional capacity that will enable Nigerians to participate actively in the oil and gas sector, as entrepreneurs and employees.

“We’ve trained over 16,000 Nigerians abroad in our overseas training scheme. We select a good number and equitably across the states of the federation in line with federal character principles.

“We look at three criteria; we look at your credentials, you must have good academic standing because it’s a competitive process, we also look at your statement of purpose and we also look at your research proposal.

“It must first, have potential to solve a problem in the oil and gas industry and a good academic knowledge in oil and gas related discipline. Then we look at how active you are in professional organisations. So we have geosciences, we have engineering, we have management, we have computing and environmental sciences,” Iyalla said.

He revealed that for the first time, the programme will partly be held at the Kaduna Centre of Excellence and conclude at the UK universities for those who chose the UK as their place of study.

“The federal government is quite adaptive to the oil and gas industry, so as the industry changes we need Nigerians to adapt to the changes of the industry. We will continue to train Nigerians in line with current and possibly future needs of the industry.

“ As you know the oil and gas industry is what really sustains us and so we need to have Nigerians as against having foreigners because we need to add value in the country by developing Nigerians to participate actively. Because the oil and gas industry is global so our goal is to also bring good value into the oil and gas industry.

Panelists who also spoke with journalists, hailed the process and improvements noticed, but noted that there is always room for improvement.

Director, Institute of Petroleum and Energy Studies, University of Port Harcourt (UNIPORT), Prof Sunday Ikiensikimama, a panelist, said candidates were interviewed based on their proposal and area of interest.

“We interact with the students to know their suitability to be able to get a PhD scholarship in whatever area they have in mind to study. We interact with the candidates and ask them pertinent questions in the area they want to study.

“They (PTDF)  have made it easy, that part of the interview, especially looking at their documents, they have solved it in a way. We are only trying to confirm what they have done and then go ahead with the interview,” he stated and expressed confidence in the candidates considering their responses to the interviews.