By Abubakar Baba Ahmad
About One hundred and Fifty Academics from selected institutions across the Northeast subregion are participating in a 1-day Post-2025 National Research Fund NRF Proposal Review and Capacity building Workshop.
The participants were selected from universities as well as military and paramilitary institutions, to include the Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University Bauchi, Sa’adu Zungur University Gadau, Federal University in Kashere Gombe among others.
The training is aimed at equipping them with the technical know-how to navigate the challenges of writing a research proposal on Social issues that can attract funding.
In a paper titled STEM Everywhere: Innovation for Sustainability, the Vice Chancellor ATBU Professor Ibrahim Garba expressed worry over the inability of researchers to prepare quality proposals to address present day challenges.
“The aim is to look at our performance 2025, where do we need to improve, what are the things that we need to do to add si that our performance will also improve in 2026”, the Vice Chancellor said.
Professor Garba said with the recent increase of NRF allocation by the Tertiary Education Trust Fund, TETFund to ten billion naira for the 2026 year representing 64 percent, the review workshop will aid the participants in the area of Interdisciplinary collaboration and AI technology driven research to meet the standards set by research grant awarding organisations.
“The dictum is no one knows it all and no one single discipline can address the challenges of humanity, so therefore disciplines must come snd coalesce together, look at the problem everyone from the perspective their discipline smd expertise, that way we’ll be able to devise innovative solutions to whatever problems we are looking at”, Professor Garba asserted.
Earlier, the Acting Director Research Innovation and Development RI&D ATBU, Dr Isa Mohammed said the workshop was organised to equip the participants with the changes observed in the areas of interest and priority by research fund grantors from the 2025 cycle.
“The incorporation of Artificial Intelligence is one of the priorities the funders are looking at now and in addition- the automation as well and also the projects that has to do with what you call SDG inclined, particularly the STEM, so this is what we want to educate ourselves about and to make more fund-able submissions so that at the end of the day, University can ne better for it”, Acting Director RI&D ATBU highlighted.
Dr Mohammed said the participants are expected to brainstorm on the identified challenges in this year’s proposal writing and winning of research funds toward navigating the bottlenecks to attract a number of grants for the university and the subregion as a whole.
In another presentation on Understanding the NRF Evaluation Framework, the Former Director RI&D ATBU Professor Fatima Sawa identified goals and targets of the research, shared responsibility among team members and problem solving as some of the key factors to consider for a research work to succeed.
The workshop with the Theme: Strengthening Research Proposal Competitiveness through Structured Peer Review and Capacity building, featured the presentation of three NRF allocation Award Certificates by the Tertiary Education Trust Fund, TETFund amounting to about seventy million naira to three successful research groups from ATBU.
