By Tare Youdeowei

Plans are underway for the inauguration of a scholarship scheme that would provide exceptional Nigerian students with an opportunity to attend Yale University, a private, Ivy League research institution, based in Connecticut, United States of America (USA).

It was disclosed in Lagos when when the university’s prominent alumni members met for the second time within a year in Lagos, under the aegis of the Yale Club.

The club’s President and founder of Zaria Academy, Dr Haroun Adamu, said the club’s number one goal “is to create awareness about its existence and objectives.” According to him, one of the aims is to attract more qualified Nigerian students to the institution and encourage other accomplished alumni members in the diaspora, to return home and contribute their quota to Nigeria’s development.

Adamu, an alumnous of 1966, noted that the club wants to sensitise Nigerians, who have either heard of Yale or would want their children to attend the institution, about its willingness to assist their wards not only for admission purposes, but also for scholarship opportunities.

To him, any student that went through the rigorous Yale examination process and emerged successfully, automatically deserves a scholarship. “There is no question about his ability or inability – he’s on scholarship automatically,” he said.

On the club’s other aims, he said, “we intend to create a forum, organize lectures, and will invite Professors, Nobel Laureates, to come and share with us, their latest research findings in all fields. This will expose Nigerians to what is happening in the world of research. These are the kinds of things we are trying to achieve, apart from Yale itself trying to engage with institutions within Africa.”

Yale’s Director of International Activities and Professor of Political Science, Ian Shapiro, also affirmed the club was working on developing a scholarship scheme for Nigerian students to attend the university. “We also would like to bring students and faculty members from Yale to Nigeria on exchange programmes.”

Shapiro said the institution also intends to facilitate research projects along many dimensions in the West African sub region. “We already have a long history in Ghana, but we don’t have any institutional history in Nigeria.”

Asked if the institution was planning to establish a campus in Nigeria, Shapiro said “no”. He declared: “we’re not in the satellite campus business.”

But he hopes to see more Nigerians at Yale, and more of Yale’s activities happening in the country. “I look forward to more students (going to Yale), more faculty (coming to Nigeria), more conferences, more exchanges and more alumni coming and going.”

On how many Nigerian students are currently studying in the university, Shapiro said: “I don’t have the exact number, probably 20 to 25, and when you include all the professional schools (within Yale), maybe 30.”

Explaining the motive behind the formation of the club, he said, “there are more than 100 graduates of Yale University in Lagos, but we haven’t had a formal Yale Club as we have in many other cities where we have a sizeable alumni of Yale University.