Nigeria: Home of wasted talents
The young engineer has not only used aluminium sheets to produce miniature automobiles including fire-fighting vans and excavators but has equally fabricated a large size planting machine using iron from metal bed, wheelbarrow tires, electric motor and motorcycle gear box. Surajo explained that he uses radio motor powered by dry cell batteries to move his […]
The young engineer has not only used aluminium sheets to produce miniature automobiles including fire-fighting vans and excavators but has equally fabricated a large size planting machine using iron from metal bed, wheelbarrow tires, electric motor and motorcycle gear box. Surajo explained that he uses radio motor powered by dry cell batteries to move his miniature automobiles forward or backward. The list of Surajo’s fabricated machines includes a bulldozer, a power generator, and a standing fan; all of which use dry cell batteries to function. Because of the short life-span of dry cell batteries, Surajo is already working on a project to produce a small hydro-power device using a turbine-like wheel fabricated from aluminium to power his machines.
The most striking of Surajo’s scientific thinking is his assertion that he has the solution to Nigeria’s electoral challenges. The solution, according to him, is a laptop-like device he fabricated to check multiple voting. The device has a central screen made of a translucent plastic with voting approval and disapproval written on either halves of it. When a card that has voted is inserted into the system, the half that disapproves of voting will be lighted from within. When a registered card that has not voted is inserted, the half that approves of voting will be lighted. What an indigenous technology that provides a feasible solution to the culture of garrison politics, which for now, pervades our democracy!
Surajo’s electronic voting machine should be of great interest to the country’s Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC). As a body that has the onerous task of conducting free and fair elections, Surajo’s resourcefulness should inspire INEC to collaborate with relevant agencies under the Federal Ministry of Science and Technology such as the National Agency for Science and Engineering Infrastructure (NASENI), Abuja; Sheda Science and Technology Complex, Abuja; Scientific Equipment Development Institute (SEDI), Minna; National Center for Remote Sensing, Jos; Power Equipment and Electrical Machinery Development Institute, Okene; Engineering Materials Development Institute, Akure; Hydraulic Equipment Development Institute (HEDI), Kano; National office for Technology Acquisition and Promotion, Abuja; National Engineering Design and Development Institute (NEDDI), Nnewi; and Electronics Development Institute (EDI), Ilesha. With this long list of agencies that seemingly have over-lapping functions even from their names; readers may not agree more with the Steven Orosanya-led Committee that recommended the merging (and in some cases scrapping) of some government agencies and parastals.
With a purposeful and committed synergy between just two or three of the numerous agencies listed above, helping Surajo to realize his dreams should not be a problem. But as typical of Nigeria, these copious agencies would pretend to be oblivious of Surajo and his ingenuity until a foreign country that appreciates the young boy’s extraordinary aptitude takes him away before they realize their negligence. This was how in the 1980s Malaysians picked palm kernel seedlings to their country; and today Nigeria is one of the largest importers of processed cooking oil from Malaysia! If however Surajo misses the eagle-eye of Asians and Europeans and thus remains here to rot away with his ideas, he is not likely to rise above being a power-plant operator in a government ministry or an automobile technician in one of the multi-national construction or oil companies in the country. This, indeed, is what makes Nigeria the home of wasted talents.
The Federal Executive Council (FEC) at a recent meeting presided over by President Jonathan, to show you how unserious Nigeria is, rejoiced at the announcement by Nissan and Stallion Group that they will jointly launch a vehicle assembly plant in Nigeria; cluelessly adding that the move is another ‘dividend’ of government’s new automotive policy! India which along with Nigeria once belonged to the group of nations labeled as third world is today a manufacturer of automobiles in addition to its strides in space technology.
Surajo’s creativity reminds me of the Gifted-Education Programme launched by Professor Jubril Aminu when he served as Minister of Education under General Ibrahim Babangida’s administration. If this programme were dutifully implemented as planned, it would have over the past two and half decades catered for the special academic needs of the likes of Surajo, which would have consequently taken Nigeria to great heights in science in technology. As typical of public policies in Nigeria where initiatives die along with their initiators, Jubril Aminu’s exit as education minister perhaps marked the end of the Gifted-Education programme. What exists of it today is only a ‘ghost’ of the scheme’s blue-print. Gifted programe was the basis of Japan’s technological revolution.
Young Surajo is already admiring Abbas bn Firnas when he declared that he wants to build an aeroplane. A Muslim Berber from Andalusia (Spain), Abbas bn Firnas (810-887AD) was an inventor, engineer, aviator, physician, and an Arabic poet. In an experimental attempt to fly in 875AD, Ibn Firnas covered himself with feathers, attached a couple of wings to his body, and from a tower flung himself down into the air. Although he flew a considerable distance as if he were a bird, the landing was bad and he injured his back. An airport in north Baghdad is named after him. May Allah (SWT) give us visionary leaders who would be unreservedly committed to catering for the needs of exceptional children, amin.