The Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University (ATBU) in Bauchi state, has commenced a two-day training workshop for 150 academics and research staff on how to write a grant-winning proposal.

Speaking during the opening ceremony of the workshop in Bauchi on Tuesday, the Vice Chancellor (VC) of the institution, Prof. Muhammad AbdulAzeez, said the training was to strengthen the staff and update their skills to enable them to compete, write and attract more grants to the university.

The VC was represented by Prof. Ibrahim Garba, the Deputy Vice-Chancellor, of Administration, of the University.

“The story towards today started last year when we hosted the first North East workshop on grant-winning proposals,” he said.

“Arising from that workshop, we submitted proposals and we were able to scale through in such a way that 10 of our proposals were given the right to access funds through the National Research Fund,” he added, saying that nine proposals were obtained through Institutional Base Research,” he said.

He added that the research grant attracted by the university would go a long way in assisting it to re-establish its mandates as a research institution.

Prof. Fatima Sawa, the head of the Directorate of Research Innovation and Development of the institution, explained that the University got approval for 10 proposals under the National Research Fund to the tune of N219,000,000 and N16.8 million under Institutional Base Research.

“Today’s workshop is a result of the fact that we observed the success of last year’s workshop because it helped us to broaden access to the National Research Fund.

“The workshop is for us to help our colleagues because they have topics, they have concept notes to submit but we have to screen and correct them effectively so that when it is eventually submitted to TETFUND, we will not get rejections.

“It’s not as if people have not been applying in the past, they have been applying but because of not following guidelines, budgetary regulations, and so many other factors, they were not successful.

“During this workshop, we will check all these things to make sure that the proposals follow the guidelines and the budget are okay before we can send them to TETFUND,” she said.