‘My Next Target Is To Build An Aeroplane’ - 17-Yr- Old Engineering Prodigy Says

A 17-
year-old
secondary
school
student,
Ismaila
Suraju,
has built a
planting
machine and a locally-made power generator that
uses water and batteries, among others.
The boy doesn't plan to stop, he says his next goal
is to build an aeroplane. Ismaila also claims to have
a know-how to create a gadget that can frustrate
election riggers in Nigeria.
When the student was younger, he had to make a
pair of slippers out of a cardboard to protect his feet
from the scorching soil of the farm path.
The necessity of protecting his face from the sun
also made him create a baseball cap, then cars,
train, grinding machines, all with the same
cardboard.
Half way through his secondary education, Suraju
graduated into using aluminum sheets in making not
only miniature automobiles, such as fire
extinguishing vans, excavators, but a large size
planting machine that can be used for planting, as
well.
“Anything I see, I will like to do. We went for
competition. I saw some people do a motorcycle
they were riding. I said I would do a planting
machine in a form of a vehicle that a person can
drive. I thought in our country we don’t have
planting machines. Farmers are suffering. Then I
took iron and aluminum sheets. I first did a small
one that a small boy can enter. Then I did a bigger
one. I used wheelbarrow tyres, iron from metal bed,
electric motor and motorcycle gearbox to make
it,” the teenager says.
The boy has also built a miniature boat with
aluminum sheets and radio motors. Thus, it can
move forward or backward when powered by dry
cell batteries.
However, Suraju believes that he could do more
with if he had better training and access to
materials.
A power generator, introduced by the young
prodigy, is powered by dry battery cells and water.
He showed how to use the generator to charge a
cell phone battery and the standing fan he made
himself.
What is more, the boy also has the solution that will
help to handle Nigeria’s electoral malpractices.
The solution is a laptop-like device he fabricated
which he calls “electronic voting system” . He
demostrated how voting is recorded on a pair of
screens that look like those of small calculators.
The “electronic voting system” is equipped with a
central screen made of a translucent plastic with
voting approval and disapproval written on either
halves of it.
When he inserts a card that has voted into the
voting box, the half that disapproves of voting will
be lighted from within. If the one that has not voted,
but registered is inserted, the half that approves of
voting will be lighted.
Suraju has managed to embody several ideas of his
and now plans to develop new projects for the
benefit of the country.
"I want to be a mechanical engineer. I want
technology to go forward in our country, Nigeria. We
need to develop technology. I want to make a bigger
excavator that human beings can enter, and it will
be working," Suraju says.
Though he has created a miniature airplane, Suraju
is confident he can built a big one that will carry
people.
Suraju’s maternal grandfather Malam Isa, who has
raised the young talent, is proud of his grandson
and always helps him with money to buy some of
the things he needs.