NNPC/Seplat Energy Joint Venture’s poised to strengthen education in Nigeria

By Everest Ezihe, Owerri

Considering the importance of education in United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, UNESCO 21st century in nation building and transformation, and worried by the decadence associated with the Nigeria educational system, the NNPC/Seplat Energy Joint Venture’s education model has advanced strategies to strengthen educational system in the country.

Seplat Energy Plc, as the foremost Nigerian indigenous energy company disclosed this in a press statement made available to news men in Owerri including Newstap.com.ng

The company observed that Nigeria’s most damaging infrastructure deficit may not be roads, power or ports, but a weak education system producing too few work-ready citizens for an economy seeking to industrialise, digitalise and compete.

The company pointed out that with about 10.5 million primary-school-age children out of school and only about one in four children aged 7 to 14 able to read a simple sentence or handle basic numeracy, education can no longer be treated as a peripheral social concern, but rather as a core national infrastructure.

“This is why Nigeria must move beyond the old model of corporate philanthropy in education — the one-off donation, ceremonial scholarship or isolated classroom block and encourage interventions that strengthen the full learning pipeline.

“The NNPC/Seplat Energy Joint Venture’s education model offers a useful example because it spans teacher development, student competition, school infrastructure, scholarships and entrepreneurship support. Its value lies not only in scale, but in structure: it treats education as a system, not a photo opportunity” the company insisted.

To justify their seriousness, the revered energy company gave an insight on how they educationally impacts their Host communities by ensuring that 34% of Seplat’s 780 undergraduate annual scholarships is benefitted by students from host communities.

The world class energy company further informed that the Seplat JV PEARLs Quiz is open to secondary schools in Delta, Edo and Imo States, with more states to follow, and
since 2012, PEARLs Quiz has impacted 61,035 teachers and students.

Furthermore, the company has spent ₦101 million in prize funding support of school projects such as libraries, classroom blocks and buses, even as STEP has recorded 1,334 educators trained, including 1,232 secondary-school teachers and 102 Ministry of Education staff.

Seplat Energy Plc expressed dissatisfaction that too often, companies still approach education through isolated gestures that create goodwill but little systemic change, while patriotically advising that the nation Nigeria now needs a more disciplined and ambitious full value-chain approach that addresses teachers, students, learning environments, progression pathways and employability as linked parts of one ecosystem.

“What distinguishes the Seplat model is that it works across several pressure points at once.

“Teacher quality is improved through structured capacity building. Student motivation is reinforced through academic competition and recognition. Schools receive infrastructure support. Scholarships widen access to tertiary education, while entrepreneurship training connects learning to economic independence.

“The logic is simple: if a system is broken at several points, meaningful intervention cannot occur at only one” they insisted.

The company reiterated that the same systems thinking, is visible in host communities and host states, thus PEARLs Quiz rewards academic excellence while leaving behind assets that strengthen schools long after the competition ends.

Also STEP, focuses on the teacher as the multiplier, noting that a scholarship may transform one student, but a strong teacher can influence hundreds over time.

The undergraduate scholarship allocation also shows a balance between national reach and local responsibility, recognising the special obligation companies have to communities closest to their operations.

They said it point blank that the policy lesson is clear, and every serious sector in Nigeria depends on education for its future workforce, arguing that energy needs engineers and technicians; healthcare needs skilled professionals; just as agricultural sectors and manufacturing needs technical competence; and the digital economy needs software, design and analytical talent.

“Poor education today becomes poor productivity tomorrow. Private-sector participation in education should therefore be recognised not as optional benevolence, but as enlightened self-interest and national economic strategy” they advised.

The company opined that, for the Nigerian government, the task is to mobilise private-sector capital and execution capacity through intentional partnerships with federal and state education authorities.

Meanwhile for companies, they said the challenge is to move from random acts of generosity to structured interventions that improve learning quality, teacher capability, school infrastructure and access pathways.

And however for the media, the company equally re-insisted that the responsibility is to distinguish interventions that genuinely move systems from those that merely generate headlines.

“Seplat Energy’s model is worthy of attention because, it goes beyond the one-off gesture. It links teachers to students, students to facilities, facilities to opportunity, and opportunity to long-term development. Nigeria does not need just more corporate interventions in education; it needs better-designed ones” they advised.