FG, state govts asked to assist, as student inventors storm Aba with eye-catchy home-made products
From Okey Sampson, Aba
Emmanuel Mbaogu, 20, Chisom Okwuanasonye, 17, and Charles Okorie, 19, are not from the same state, neither do they attend the same school. While Mbaogu and Okorie are from Ezike, Isiala Mbano and Umueshi, Ideato South local governments of Imo State, respectively, Okwuanasonye is from Abagana in Njikoka local government of Anambra State. But recently these students who attend different secondary schools in Oyigbo, Rivers State, caused a stir at Ariaria International Market, Aba, where they had gone to display their products: magnificent mansion, self-loading tipper truck and other eye-popping prototype products.
As the display was on, as usual, people gathered to have a glimpse of the wonders the young boys did with their hands and showered them with monetary gifts by way of encouragement. It was at that juncture that the attention of a patriotic man, one Mr. Augustine Osuji, who came to the market to make some purchases was drawn to the display. On moving closer, he was surprised with what he saw and decided to bring them down to the Aba office of The Sun.
Asked how they did it, Mbaogu said: “Okorie knows how to sketch, each time he comes up with the drawing of a building; both of us will start to put it in solid form. Later we noticed that Chisom who is residing within our vicinity also has the same talent like us and we co-opted him into the team and from there we built the house and later the self-loading tipper.”
The house that took them five weeks to build has an electric fencing and an electronic/electrical gate that opens automatically to let in ‘people,’ with the help of a Duracell battery of nine volts that also powers the lights that illuminate the interior. It also has a water reservoir. The building materials for this special house which are sourced locally include cork floater (got from refrigerator scrap), cardboard papers, cartons which serve as the roofing sheets and an amplifier disc transformer which supplies current to the electric fence.
“After building the house, we felt we should go for something higher and more challenging and we settled for a self-loading tipper truck which by all standards was more complicating,” Okorie said. “The idea to construct the tipper came after three of us saw a man who constructed a Keke NAPEP (tricycle) locally and we decided to make something more attractive.”
The self-loading tipper has the features of a normal articulated truck with an in-built automatic excavator which scoops solid materials and deposits them inside the main bowl. The truck which also took about five weeks to be ‘manufactured’ was constructed with cork floater, motor mechanism from a disused DVD and generator tyre which serve as the front tyres. They used motorcycle speed metre for the fuel gauge and electric bulbs for the headlamps, super glue cover for the horn, perfume aerosol can for the fuel tank, disused small torchlight bulbs for the side lights, fuel hosepipe for the exhaust pipe, PVC pipe for the gas tank, wood cover with aluminium for the body and empty Vaseline can for the air tank.
The boys who said what they are doing does not in anyway affect their studies revealed that they spent about N7, 000 to build the house while the truck cost them about N11,000. They appealed for financial assistance to enable them do more. “If given the opportunity, we can build real houses and trucks,” Okwuanasonye said. “We can also construct other things that are not yet manufactured in this part of the world such as helicopters, drones etc.”
Osuji, the man who brought them to The Sun office in Aba pleaded with the federal and their various state governments to assist the boys by taking over their education. He also pleaded with corporate bodies to fund the projects they are embarking on so that they can produce more concrete stuffs.