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| Ben Okezie. President, Abia Media Forum. |
The Abia Media Forum calls on Nigerians of good conscience to join us in our request that the Petroleum Technology Development Fund (PTDF) stop its injustice and insult to the people of the South-East excluded from the lucrative PTDF scholarships and come to the region to do its interviews as it did for other regions.
The Petroleum Technology Development Fund (PTDF)
shocked rational and fair-minded Nigerians last week with its claim that it
could not hold interviews for its scholarships in the South-East but did so
successfully in the North-East and North-West.
PTDF instead offers persons from the South-East the
opportunity to attend those interviews outside their geopolitical zone.
According to the President of Abia Media Forum, Ben
Okezie, the forum is convinced that the PTDF can and should rise to the
constitutional and professional obligation to treat all sections of the country
fairly and equitably.
The Abia Media Forum invites PTDF management to
apply Section 2 of the Nigerian Constitution which directs all agencies of
government to enforce the Fundamental Objectives and Directive Principles of
State Policy. In this case, PTDF must ensure via sub-section 10 that “There
should not be any discrimination on the grounds of place of origin, sex
(gender), religion, status, ethnic or linguistic ties.”
PTDF is duty-bound to conduct the Overseas
Scholarship Scheme interviews in a location in the South-East as it has done
for other regions.
PTDF said it received 26 000 applications and
shortlisted over 8000. The PTDF OSS is an annual programme that awards
scholarships to Nigerians for MSc and PhD studies in partner universities in
the United Kingdom, Germany, France, China, and Malaysia.
PTDF would hold interviews for its Overseas
Scholarship Scheme in Abuja (North Central), Port Harcourt (South-South), Ibadan
(South-West), Kaduna (North-West) and Bauchi (North-East), according to Mr
Bello Mustapha, Manager of the OSS.
The Abia Media Forum considers the PTDF claim that the North-West and the North-East are more secure than the South-East both tendentious and ridiculous as it flies in the face of Nigeria’s current history. Pray, was it not in Kaduna that terrorists bombed a train and took over several communities? Is Kaduna not the location that citizens can hardly reach again through the connecting road to other towns such as Abuja?
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