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By Emman Ovuakporie
TNG Discovery in its tradition of discovering hidden talents in Nigeria and Africa, last Tuesday published Emmanuel Anthony’s ingenuity in designing a helicopter which was tested at Nigerian Airforce Base in Kaduna.
In this concluding part of the interview with TNG Discovery, the Benue born genius spoke on his design of an aircraft that can help Nigerians save lives during emergencies.
One amazing aspect of Anthony’s ingenuity is the fact that he gets his inspiration studying the dragonfly.
Hear Him:
I also have a design for an air-taxi because of the rate at which traffic is increasing in Nigeria, cars are been bought on a daily basis and cities like Laos, Port Harcourt and Abuja which is about joining them; for transportation in the morning to the offices and also for medical assistance.
For example if an implant is to be made or any emergency situation comes up whereby there’s a need to save a patient, the air-taxi will serve better than the normal taxi. The air-taxi will be able to convey the passenger or the victim through the shortest route which is the air because the land we have to maneuver several kinds of terrains but the air-taxi will go straight to its destination, emergency areas where they will need to attend to the situation.
The air-taxi can convey at most four persons including the pilot and it can take off at a height of about at least 1000kms above sea level to transport passengers and it will boost the Nigerian economy.
I am having financial challenge; technological and innovative growth in Nigeria needs funds, we need to make researches on a daily basis.
The world is growing technologically on a daily basis and if Nigeria is left behind, it is not because we don’t have the manpower or the technical knowhow intellectually, finances and research are the main challenges and these will make Nigeria to be able to brace up with the world in technology.
If you look at developed countries like America and the rest, there are Nigerians there who are doing well because they have what it takes upstairs but financially bringing it back home to make our own country to be up to the same level with these developed countries, we need funds to go into researches and technological innovations which has to be opened.
You can see we are in a jet age, there are teenagers and adolescent who have concepts and ideas that can be sold to the world but if you go to the cemetery in Nigeria a lot of ideas have been buried there because there is no how they could come out, if they want to come out, one way or the other they are oppressed because they are among the high class that can showcase them.
But with this platform that I am talking with now, anybody who has a concept can come up and that is why I am coming up with my own concept of an air-taxi, an air-ambulance and air-firefighter.
For example the fire that burst out in California 2years back, it curbed a lot of things. The conventional firefighter will have to fill water into the tank, drive across terrains, traffic and before it gets to the location of the fire outbreak, a lot of damages would have been done.
But with the air-firefighter we can curb fire outbreak faster. We can save more lives and properties. For example if there is an accident taking Abuja as a scenario, if there is an accident at Zuba and we want to take the victims to a hospital in Garki in the morning with the air-taxi that victim or victims can be saved. If there’s need to transfer vital organs from one federal medical centre in a state to another federal medical centre in another state the air-taxi comes to play because by the time you book for an aircraft, the aircraft has to wait for the number of passengers to load on that aircraft, the number of luggage before you now slate in this vital organ that the patient is waiting to be administered to, that life would have been gone.
Even delegates who have urgent meetings from one state to another state; for example this issue of kidnapping and terrorist act that is going on now, but we thank God the federal government is trying to do their best, with the air-taxi there is nobody that can stand in the air and wait for you to kidnap you. Even the train is vulnerable to be kidnapped because if a rocket is launched at that train the pilot will go blank but with the air-taxi you can take somebody from Abuja to Kaduna peacefully.
I am not trying to close up the local air flight, no; the air-taxi can do interstate transportation because it is not all aircraft that lift from one state to another state. There are some states that don’t have international airports and even local airports but this air-taxi can go conveniently, taking workers, delegates, security personnel for even surveillance because by the time the air-taxi goes in the air the bulk noise the helicopter will make the air-taxi will not make that noise, the bulk noise the aircraft will make, the air-taxi will not make that noise.
Now the landing ability of the aircraft, you have to get an airport for an aircraft to land, the air-taxi can land anywhere.
If I have funds, within the space of three months the air-taxi will be in the air in Abuja here for the first test-run either in the eagle square and then we go from one vicinity in Abuja before we start moving from Kaduna or to Kogi state or to Benue with the air-taxi.
There are concepts and ideas that are birthed on a daily basis. When a human has an innovative mindset for the positive growth of his or her country, ideas and concept will daily be birthed because on a daily basis when we go out and enter the taxi we see the needs of the masses and on a daily basis needs are been generated in different sectors and my sector is in the aerospace and that is why I have to come into this area for the air-taxi.