The Petroleum Technology Development Fund (PTDF) has commenced the interview of 2,102 applicants for Overseas Scholarship Scheme (OSS) for PhD in France, Germany and Malaysia.

Speaking during the exercise yesterday in Abuja, PTDF's Deputy General Manager of Education and Training, Dr. Mohamed Bello Mustafa, said the number is from a pool of over 30,000 that applied for both MSc and PhD programmes.

"We are in the second week of the overseas scholarships scheme interviews. Last week we did for the MSc in four centres we have two centres that we did the MSc and the PhD, now we are commencing the second week for the PhD programmes."

He added that the final candidates will be selected based on merit budgetary provisions and it is a management decision that will be taken at the end of the day.

"Once we are done with all these processes, we'll forward our recommendation to management. But usually, like last year, we gave one per state, then we gave an additional one for oil producing states."

One of the panelists, Prof. Bashir Aliyu, said the exercise was progressing well.

He said the panel was basically looking at the quality of candidates from their first degree, masters, capacity, ability, and the quality of the work they present.