Secondary school students have expressed excitement over their exposure to aircraft manufacturing and flying, saying the training recently received from a US-based non-governmental organization, Project Sunshine, has stimulated their passion in taking up aviation as a career.
Our correspondent reports that Project Sunshine last week embarked on another round of training for students in selected public secondary schools in Kwara State.
The training tagged, “Aerostem Fellowship”, which commenced August last year at International Aviation College (IAC), Ilorin, was to assist students in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics realize their dreams of becoming aviators and aeronautical engineers.
Project Sunshine is the brainchild of a political scientist turned pilot, Captain Idris Ekungba, who hails from Owo, Ondo State but raised in Ilorin, Kwara State capital.
It would be recalled that Hundreds of students of senior section of public secondary schools including Queen Elizabeth Secondary School, Ilorin; Ilorin Grammar School (IGS) and Government Secondary School (GSS), Ilorin; Government High School, Adeta, Ilorin; Baboko Community Secondary School, Ilorin; and Unilorin Secondary School, Ilorin participated in the training.
After camping them at the IAC, Ilorin last year for a few days, a follow-up training was conducted in their schools.
They were taught how to make a plane and the process involved in flying an aeroplane.
A female Senior Secondary Student One of Queen Elizabeth Secondary School, Yekini Khalisoh, described the training as amazing, saying she has been able to learn how to build remote airplanes with simple available tools that could be found within the immediate environment.
A final year student of GSS, Ilorin, Umar Muhammad Sulton, expressed delight that the training has been helpful for the participants whose interest was to build aircraft.
He said, “We have been in this programme since August of last year. So, we are happy. It gives us the initiative about building an aircraft. We are passionate about it since the day we have been taught, not just that we will be seeing aircraft flying. We have been able to build something.
“After we finished with our learning session, I will try to do cognitive thinking and how to be able to build something. My colleagues and I are trying to build an aircraft even for the school before leaving so that we have a record of an aircraft built by a particular set”.
A student pilot, Musa Aliyu Damilola, who conducted the technical and practical session with the students in each school, said the participants were being enlightened on the prerequisites to build and fly an aircraft, especially remotely piloted aircraft (RPA).
He explained that the training was also designed to propagate the vision of Captain Idris Ekungba of building the next generation of aviators in the country.
Damilola told journalists during the training at GSS, Ilorin that he enrolled for training in International aviation college having developed interest in the way aircraft is flown in the air in his formative years in Zaria, Kaduna State.
“We are enlightening the young generation on how to go about it in the aviation industry. Because when you are gifted with something and distribute it to the young ones, it wouldn’t just be only you. So, you have a name and set a record for yourself.
“From the first day we started, we did the Aerostem programme. We brought the students together under our own umbrella. We showed them and saw that they generated interest in aviation. That is how you can bring young ones to generate passion for it, most especially the piloting and the engineering aspects.”
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