Inside Nigeria’s N365 million Laureate Prize: The step-by-step guide to getting nominated

Nigeria’s Federal Government is putting N365 million behind a new national competition designed to identify and reward outstanding research by students in tertiary institutions across the country.

The Tertiary Institutions National Laureate Prize recognises research at undergraduate, master’s and doctoral levels across six thematic areas, with individual winners eligible for prizes of up to N100 million.

But winning the prize is not as simple as submitting a thesis online.

The competition runs through a multi-stage process involving students’ institutions, regional committees, and a national judging panel, and understanding that process matters more than almost anything else if you actually want a shot at it.

At a glance

• Total annual prize pool: N365 million
• Academic levels covered: Undergraduate, Master’s, Doctoral
• Thematic areas: 6
• National thematic laureates per cycle: 18
• Highest individual prize: N100 million (Doctoral Star Prize)
• Who submits entries: Institutions, not students directly
• Key requirement: The work must be deposited in the national repository and carry a valid NDN
• 2026 cycle deadlines: institutional committees constituted by 15 August 2026; entries submitted by 31 August 2026; inaugural awards expected November 2026

The money: How N365 million gets shared

The prize architecture is built around 18 national thematic laureates, one winner in each of six thematic areas, at each of three academic levels.

Three of those 18 laureates go on to become the flagship Star Prize winners.

The six thematic areas are:

• Agriculture;
• Teaching Innovation;
• Medicine and Health Sciences;
• Science, Engineering and Technology;
• Law;
• Arts and Social Sciences.

How the money breaks down:

• Undergraduate Star Prize, the best overall undergraduate dissertation nationwide: N35 million
• Master’s Star Prize, the best overall master’s thesis nationwide: N50 million
• Doctoral Star Prize, the best overall doctoral thesis nationwide: N100 million
• Thematic Excellence Awards, the remaining 15 thematic laureates across the six theme areas and three levels who aren’t elevated to a Star Prize: N12 million each

There’s also a category with a bit more meaning attached to it. The Medicine and Health Sciences prize track carries an honorary name, the Dr Stella Adadevoh Excellence Award in Medicine and Medical Sciences, named for the physician remembered for her role in containing Nigeria’s 2014 Ebola outbreak by quarantining the country’s first confirmed patient despite external pressure to release him.

Who can actually enter?

Participation is open to Nigerian students enrolled in accredited tertiary institutions, with entries submitted through their respective institutions.

Academic staff can also bring outstanding student work to the attention of their institution’s Laureate Committee.

The programme explicitly covers universities, polytechnics, monotechnics, colleges of education, military institutions, and their recognised equivalents.

The three eligible academic levels are:

• Undergraduate: final-year dissertations/projects
• Master’s: postgraduate theses
• Doctoral: PhD theses

Each institution may nominate up to 18 works per cycle, six at each academic level, one per thematic area, under this same equivalence rule.

Beyond subject matter and academic level, entries are also screened for research integrity.

Plagiarism, fabricated data, false information, or other research misconduct can get a work disqualified at any stage, even after it has advanced through several rounds of review.

The important catch: Students don’t apply directly

This is the single most important thing to understand about the Laureate Prize: students do not submit entries directly to the national competition.

You cannot log onto a portal, upload your thesis, and enter yourself. The programme is deliberately institution-led.

Here’s what that actually looks like in practice:

• Step 1: Get your work into the national repository.

Before anything else can happen, your thesis, dissertation, or project must be formally deposited into the National Student Publication Database under the NERD policy, and issued a valid NDN.

If your work has already gone through your institution’s NERD deposit process, confirm with your department that it has been assigned an NDN. No work can proceed to Laureate assessment without one.

• Step 2: Get noticed.

Having an NDN doesn’t automatically put you in the competition, it just makes you eligible to be considered. Someone still has to actively put your work forward.

The official guidance is direct on this point: students who believe their work is outstanding are told they may confidently bring it to the attention of their Institution-based Laureate Committee for assessment.

Academic staff, supervisors, HODs, Deans, are given the same encouragement regarding students whose work they rate highly.

• Step 3: Institutional review and selection.

Each participating institution is required to have an Institution-based Laureate Committee, academic staff formally appointed by the Vice-Chancellor, Rector, or Provost specifically to run this process locally.

This committee reviews the works brought to its attention, checks eligibility and NERD compliance, and independently decides which single work, in each theme and level, best represents the institution.

The committee’s decision is submitted under a formal declaration of accuracy that is logged with a timestamp and digital signature for accountability.

• Step 4: Regional evaluation.

Once an institution submits its selected entries, they move to a Regional Committee, organised by geopolitical zone.

This layer evaluates entries against others from the same region, assessing originality, methodology, national relevance, and overall quality, before shortlisting the strongest ones to advance further.

• Step 5: National evaluation.

Entries that clear the regional stage go before the National Committee, which conducts the final round of assessment nationwide and determines who is declared Winner, Runner-up, or Commended in each category, or, where nothing clears the bar, declares that award vacant for the cycle.

The whole chain runs in one direction:

• Thesis completed. Deposited in NERD, NDN issued. Brought to Institution Committee. Institution selects and submits under oath. Regional Committee reviews and promotes. National Committee makes the final determination.

How Judges actually score a submission

This is where the programme distinguishes itself from a typical essay competition: the scoring system is unusually detailed, giving students a clear indication of what judges will be looking for.

Every entry is judged on a two-layer framework: 70% of the final score comes from Academic Assessment, and 30% comes from a separate Life Impact, Innovation and Commercialisation layer.

• A combined score of at least 70% is the prescribed minimum to win a Thematic Excellence Award. Fall short, and the award for that theme is declared vacant for that cycle; nobody wins it.
• Scores of 65 to 69% can be considered only in exceptional cases, where a work shows outstanding national significance or innovation, and only with a two-thirds majority vote from reviewers, backed by written justification.
• To be eligible for a Star Prize, a work needs a minimum score of 75%, and it must already be one of the 18 thematic laureates. There is no route to a Star Prize that skips thematic laureate status first.
• The Operations Manual’s screening guidance states that a score below 60% should not proceed at all.

The takeaway for students: this isn’t decided on vibes. It rewards work that is methodologically sound and has a credible path to real-world use, whether patentable, fundable, publishable, or policy-relevant.

A purely theoretical thesis will lose points on the commercialisation layer unless it can articulate why it matters outside the seminar room.

What happens if you disagree with the result

The programme allows for appeals, but with tight guardrails. An appeal:

• Must be filed within three calendar months of the official winners’ announcement
• Can only be submitted by an authorised member of the institution’s Laureate Committee, not by an individual student directly
• Must point to a specific procedural irregularity, not disagreement with the score or ranking
• Must be backed by supporting evidence and a clearly stated remedy

Simply feeling that your work deserved to win is not, on its own, grounds for appeal. Once the National Committee rules on an admitted appeal, that decision is final.

Practical advice for students who want a real shot

• Confirm your NDN status early.

Check with your department whether your thesis has been deposited into the national repository and assigned an NDN. Without one, you’re not eligible regardless of how strong the work is.

• Build your project around the two-layer rubric from the start, not after it’s finished.

A thesis conceived with methodological rigour, national relevance, and real-world applicability in mind will naturally score better than one retrofitted to sound impactful afterward.

• Cultivate your supervisor relationship.

Since institutional nomination realistically runs through faculty recommendation, a supervisor who champions your work internally can be as decisive as the work’s abstract merit.

• Know your institution’s internal timeline, not just the national one.

Because only 18 works per institution can advance at all, the real competition for a nomination slot often happens inside your own department before it reaches a regional or national judge.

Internal deadlines and how each Laureate Committee is constituted will vary by school, so check directly with your department, supervisor, or your institution’s NERD Focal Officer.