The title and trophy for the World’s first ever dark side of the moon landing has been audaciously claimed by the Chinese Aerospace Industry. A huge achievement in itself added to their launch of the first quantum satellite. This is the work of Jian-Wei Pan, China’s father of Quantum. The #ChangE4 spacecraft on 3rd of January 2019 landed successfully on this most remote area of earth’s satellite rarely seen which has one of the largest craters in the solar system, the South pole- Aitken Basin. This side was first photographed by the Luna 3 space probe . About 18% of the far side of the moon is visible from earth on occasions due to what is called Liberation. The Soviet Academy of Science published the first atlas of the moon’s far side in the same year Nigeria got its independence in 1960. NASA’s Apollo 8 astronauts where the first to see with the naked eye this side of the Moon. Incidentally, Chinese companies are already mass producing toy samples of the ChangE4 to further inspire its future generations of space engineers, astronauts, scientists, innovators, inventors, disruptors and makers, awakening a sense of duty for them to carry on in the foot steps of their legends of today. And all this achievements under the watch of President Xi Jinping The question is what is Nigeria’s current leadership doing in the aerospace field or any science or technology subsector you may ask?
A few weeks back the technology space was awash with a new digital piggy bank which teaches kids to manage money in an increasingly cashless society. These are the paths fintech companies are walking to bring value to the temple of innovation in everyday life in nations that have entrenched technology as the key driving force of its socioeconomic and political frontiership. All these are present day empowerment actions driven through education, investment in technology, policy and state cum private sector funding to secure the future generation through deploying scientific systems to push learning to dimensions today known as “extreme learning” across all hierarchies of their society. Nations with a large middle class of extreme learners in the science and tech field such as the Chinese have become dominant forces in the new world order. The Chinese are referred to as the most determined people in the history of humanity.
A Google-backed vertical farm startup raised another $90milion recently to build in cities across the US. Bowery farm is taking its technological knowhow to a grander scale at a time Nigeria’s entire agricultural sector is plagues by a lack of bigdata from satellite imagery, an age long chaotic farm to fork value chain, inhibited further by terrorism, a dearth of scientific R&D advancement and the challenges of climate change. All these challenges have taken a toll on our GDP and brand valuation as a nation.
Its key to add that findings by the Economist shows that about one-third of humanity will own a smartphone by the end of 2019. Each device contains mined elements from all over the world inclusive of Nigeria.
Nigeria’s population is made of over 60% youth. Interestingly and scientifically an average human adult is made up of 7 octillion atoms (Seven accompanied with 27 zeros). This is an indicator that shows the energy capacity of each and every adult human in action or in the state of rest. This insight unearths the unit measure of energy potential of any adult individual and it highlights collectively every nation’s human capital capacity. In the context of Nigeria multiply all that atomic content by 120 million (people) and you will be marvelled by how much of a waste of human resources we are so used to without a need to rethink, re-explore and put into practice new scientific processes to unleash quatums of sustainable progress for our national prosperity and for the good of our successor generation. Nigeria today is more scientifically moribund and rudderless. Other nations are on a per second basis sustainably tapping into their energy capacity in the human capital realm and ripping the palpable GDP benefits, thereby driving job creation, entrepreneurship, technological advancement and working to keep one step ahead with one form of competitive advantage or the other in today’s interconnected and globalized world. In an article written by Tolu Ogunlesi in the PUNCH of Monday, September 21st, 2015 titled “A Spending Guide For Wealthy Nigerians”, he advises the public and private sector as also the super rich to invest and fund researchers and research institutes inclusive of impact funding Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics (STEM) education and development. The Scientification of the average Nigerian mind is key to its present and future existence. A process already achieved by the Chinese and which continues to yield the kind of results synonymous with its position as the second largest economy in the world. The Sino-model as emphasized repetitively by fmr. Gov.Peter Obi at the 2018 Vice presidential debate remains the ultimate nation building conceptology Nigeria must strive to replicate, given 40years after China is the industrial manufacturing powerhouse of the world.
The award winning and reputed PUNCH columnist Abimbola Adelakun had in the past taken some swipes at past Honourable Ministers of a Science and Technology and also particularly the current one Dr. Ogbonnaya Onu. She had especially x-rayed his four years in office with unencouraging pointers given his weightless comments about what our direction of industrialisation should be – captured in a pencil remark in 2015 and on the quest of this President Buhari administration to put a Nigerian astronaut in orbit by 2030. One of the articles is titled “What does the Ministry of Science and Technology Do, Really?” and another with the headline “Astronaut 2030: Lazy Nigeria Fantasies”. With the support of my Solar Eagles colleagues i had officially written to him to request funding for astronaut training with no response till today. These stories chronicle our lack of capacity to drive the forward motion of science and technology in Nigeria. Science remains a key methodology and channel required to attain a sustainably restructured and diversified economy with gains of ubiquitous skills acquisitionship, application of any technology transfer, protection of intellectual property, funding accessibility to commecialise inventions and innovation as also grow our entrepreneurship, and all these wielded together for Nigeria’s profitable emergence as a global player. The likes of Brazil, India, Singapore and even the buzzing example of China have taken bold steps through championing technological leaps that continue to impact their politics, health, educational, tourism and manufacturing sectors at dotcom speed.
In the light of questions highlighted in the articles above mentioned by Abimbola Adelakun I will introduce the Nigeria Solar Eagles National Team. We are a very aware fraternity of scientifically capable persons, who crave Nigeria’s need to embrace a constututionally driven technology national culture. And we use this medium to make an expedient call for support from all global minded citizens based on our ongoing R&D project to drive Nigeria’s indigenous scientific and technological capacity to new heights. It remains unacceptable to continue to engender the mannerism of technological indolence, refusing to decisively act with the energy of forward thinking action. The global intelligentsia, and institutions have to reach out more to the technologically disadvantaged nations to promote scientific knowhow and empower the emerging economies to become better self sufficient in science. The SolarEagles’ project is centred around the building and testing of the intelligent 9Jabolt solar car due to compete at the World Solar Challenge in Adelaide, Australia in October 2019. This project offers a piece to ownership to every contributor especially Nigerians, as the Solar Eagles accret the best brains on behalf of Nigeria with a force for positive development to shape technological possibilities and outcomes in the short, medium and long term.
It noteworthy to state that this rare opportunity to birth something new in building the 9Jabolt solar car will speak future volumes for more than two centuries to come in our auto industry, the value chains across other indigenous technology clusters, academia and hitech industries. The racing of this intelligent machine at the World Solar Challenge (WSC) will cement Nigeria’s name, flag and national pride in gold and firmly position her in new global institutional corridors as the International Solar car Federation (ISF) and on the world stage. Therefore the SolarEagles call on your most expedient action in whatever capacity to support our gofundme project as we quest for the World Solar Challenge in October 2019. In a bid go give clarity to our quest to pioneer a historic path for Nigeria’s technological futurism, this project has some unique features worth noting. The Nigeria Solar Eagles National Team is of the age range of between 18years-55years, as the team houses a lot of competent youth science based skillsets. The ingenuity and mental doggedness put to the test in our work has led us to strive to pursue originality of industrial design in achieving the exterior look and engine power system. It is part of our R&D ambition to introduce a WIPO (patented) complementary self sustaining low carbon signature electrical energy system and/or a self-perpetuating electronic miniature sustainable system to generate power and store in lithium ion batteries besides the use of solar panels made of perovskite. Perovskite is a new light sensitive material with greater surface area to capture sunlight and has better capacity than silicon. No one is likely to have produced such an engine configuration before us as we pursue this first. The 9Jabolt solar car is a very bold attempt in auto R&D. Some enthusiasts have called us the answer to America and Elon Musk’s Tesla and Russian Kalashnikov-CV1, but then we have asked they be patient till we achieve our mark.
The SolarEagles can be referred to as Nigeria’s first technology national team with its own custom designed jersey and Federation and we are also known as the Nigeria EcoRacing Team. This project will come to life with the institutionalization of The Nigeria Solar car Federation (NScF). We will purse vigorously the NScF establishment by an Act of the National Assembly from Q3, 2019. The process has started. The NScF will interphase statutorily with the International Solar Car Federation (ISF) and South Australia Motorsport Board to achieve bringing home skills capacity, ensure tech transfer, broaden our R&D potential, impact the private sector driven (commercial and environmentally viable) electric car manufacturing industry. The SolarEagles intend part of the global ISF congress to drive the opening up of future funding channels to Nigerian technologists and to the continent from a holistic standpoint.
The expertise and partnership collaborations on this project are being sourced based on pursuing marketing relationships with General Electric (GE), Wolfram-Mathematica, Eaton, Microsoft365, LIT, Coca Cola, Mars One, Siemens, SmartAlliance, Aggrey Button, Result Science/Cost Science, SATFORMS, Science Ambassadors Foundation (SAF) and a host of other partners to be unveiled. Heureka Ent. Limited is the firm vested with the responsibility to aggregate all the foreign and key local content partners who are on standby to supply Artificial intelligence, Robotics expertise, Intelligent Software, Actuators/Auduinos, mechatronics technicality, very important Team building training and the right psychological management needed for the SolarEagles to perform optimally at the WSC2019. We intend to have Bas Lansdorp Cofounder and CEO Mars One Project visit the Solar Eagles and deliver a presentation of mankind’s next major technological leap as the 2024 Martian landing draws close. Bas also has a history with World Solar Challenge.
Also noteworthy is that the concept approach being taken on this project is likely to bring some measure of disruption to the electric car ecosystem and thereby create a surge of spinoffs in the private sector electric car manufacturing industry. Our project will also help shape policy in this sector.
The SolarEagles intend for the 9Jabolt solar car’s building process to be followed globally, contributed to and watched via a Reality TV style broadcast like BigBrother (Naija). When fully built and tested it is to be showcased across the major cities in the six geopolitical zones of Nigeria before the team departs for the World Cup in Australia in October.
This project will teach the key fundamentals of technological incubation, goal setting, taking ownership, brand marketing, product development and the demands of threading the path of scientific rigor. The Solar Eagles have invoked Executive Order Five or local content law signed by President Buhari on Feb. 2nd, 2018 in our letter seeking the express intervention of the Minister of Science & Technology, who has reneged to give this project the critical support systems it requires after meeting him twice in four years and writing several correspondences. The Ministry of Trade and Investment have been more forthcoming and their efforts are appreciated. This project bears the seal of Nigerian content all the way. Nigerian youth scientists numbering over a million people cannot keep complaining, we must act and the time is now. The “Solar Eagles” have pursued this R&D project for six years now, there’s no turning back given Nigeria’s SolarEagles missed featuring at the WSC in Oct. 2015 and 2017 edition due to funding challenges. We use this medium to establish a clarion call to the private sector to impact invest in this project as a medium to drive the growth of STEM footprint in the country and continentwide. We have a timeline of 4-6months to complete building & testing before departure. For a nation to achieve technological leaps it must have a Return-On-Investment mindedness. Nigeria cannot expect a return on national development without a corresponding investment in its successor scientific base especially given that the SolarEagles National Team is a National Property which will be passed on to future generations, therefore, the actions of the Federal, state governments, the Minister of Youth and Sports are all required with immediacy. Scientific advancement is a key dividend of democracy which must be sort after by a people. And conclusively as Chief Scientist and Team captain of this extremely gifted men and women of Science, this project is about the future of power, process and patient genius so we urge the support of every Nigerian. Our works and interviews can be viewed via
http://www.gofundme.com/getustoworldsolarchallenge2019
The Renewable Motorsport event called “The World Solar Challenge” is a more than 30year event and holds biennially in Adelaide, Australia. The SolarEagles are to be Africa’s only team at the event in October 2019 and seek key partnerships and sponsorship to finalise this paradigm shifting project.
