Combating Issues Of multiple Scholarship Awardees

COMBATING ISSUE OF MULTIPLE SCHOLARSHIP AWARDEES

Stakeholders of the various Oil and Gas Industry Scholarship Schemes have been called upon to adopt the use of automated technology as a solution in awarding multiple Oil and Gas scholarships to a single beneficiary.

Managing Director, Dragnet Solutions Limited, Robert Ikazoboh, gave the advice during the “One Awardee, One Award” roundtable discussion organised by the firm for the International Oil Companies (IOC) operating in Nigeria. The event which was recently held in Lagos had in attendance representatives from the various concerned IOCs such as Mobile, Chevron, NAOIC/AGIP, NLNG as well as NAPIMS.

In his keynote presentation, Ikazoboh bemoaned the popular practice among students where an undergraduate is a beneficiary of multiple scholarships from either the same or similar IOCs scheme, an act which he condemned and described as a “theft of opportunities’. He also noted that if left unchecked, it could give rise to other forms of malpractices.

He also added that a multiple awardee of Oil and Gas Industry based scholarships deprives a countless number of indigent undergraduates who are in dire need of such sponsorship, an equal opportunity to be beneficiaries thus, defeating the intended purpose for the establishment of the scheme by the IOCs.

The Dragnet boss identified the inefficiency of the manual processing method deployed in the verification of candidates’ profiles, absence of a sensitization campaign and strict enforcement among others, as some of the factors responsible for the high prevalence of the act among awardees.

Dragnet Solutions, a Screening Solutions firm in Nigeria, in response to the need to find a lasting solution to the challenge, has taken the initiative to develop a central portal for scholarship and bursary management called Scholastisca.

The Scholastisca portal builds and stores the profiles of candidates applying to the various Oil and Gas Scholarship Schemes on a database through biometric technology by ensuring that no candidate has multiple profiles. The hallmark of Scholastisca is that each candidate is given a unique Identification after ensuring that an awardee can only benefit from one Oil and Gas scholarship.

While acknowledging that the issue of multiple scholarship is a moral one, the various participants at the event who have at one time or the other been victims of the act, applauded Dragnet Solutions for its innovation which they believed would go a long way in tackling the issue and ensure that many less privileged students benefit from their Corporate Social Responsibility activity for disadvantaged undergraduates. They also agreed that there was need to work out the modalities of the proposed solution.