October 04, 2016
A Nigerian Masters student who has graduated with distinction from Robert Gordon University (RGU) in Aberdeen is also celebrating picking up an industry prize for his academic performance from BP.
Ignatius Akpabio (23), from Lagos, graduated with an MSC in IT for the Oil and Gas Industry in July, and was awarded the BP prize for the best project on the course at the School of Computing science and digital Media's annual awards ceremony.
Ignatius said: “I feel very excited to have won this prize as I didn’t expect it and I’m very grateful to the best project supervisor anyone can have, Dr Iain Pirie, for been very supportive of me during the implementation of my MSc project.”
Ignatius decided to embark on the course due to its unique nature in the higher education sector, as well as the growing importance of the oil and gas industry in his home country.
“Oil and gas being the major source of GDP in Nigeria means that the future of the country might well depend on the sector,” he said. “I’m a strong proponent of the ‘Nigeria of Tomorrow’ and therefore, in every possible way I want to contribute my own quota to the development of my country.
“Coming from an IT background, I would like to use IT to develop and improve the oil and gas sector.”
Ignatius developed an inventory management system for an oil and gas servicing company as part of his MSc project, which was able to monitor and ensure effective management of goods to and from the warehouses and also record sales and purchases of goods while automatically updating stock levels with each transaction.
He said: “Implementing the system was very challenging as it consists of a lot of functionalities. It was developed as a web application to aid authorised access from anywhere around the world as long as there is connection to the internet.”
Ignatius added: “The MSc course content itself is a very rich one which encompasses modules from core oil and gas engineering, petroleum geoscience and information technology.
“I have found my time at RGU very rewarding and the School, alongside dedication on my part, has helped me improve on my software development skills.
“Thanks to lecturers like Dr David Lonie and Dr Angela Siegel, I found software development very interesting and this enabled me to excel exceedingly well in both modules.”
