{"id":17350,"date":"2023-04-20T12:36:43","date_gmt":"2023-04-20T12:36:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/dreaming-sky-high-nigerian\/"},"modified":"2023-04-20T12:42:14","modified_gmt":"2023-04-20T12:42:14","slug":"dreaming-sky-high-nigerian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/dreaming-sky-high-nigerian\/","title":{"rendered":"Dreaming sky high, Nigerian man builds airplane from trash"},"content":{"rendered":"

LAGOS (Reuters) – Bolaji Fatai has never set foot in an airplane, but that hasn’t stopped him from building his own remote-controlled model aircraft from trash and sending it soaring over the sprawl and chaos of Lagos, Nigeria’s commercial capital.<\/p>\n

On a recent cloudy day, the single-propeller plane withstood cross-winds high above a sandy football field and swooped low over the heads of onlookers in Oworonshoki, the poor neighbourhood where Fatai lives in the east of the city.<\/p>\n

He bought the propeller and remote control in a shop, but constructed the body, wings, tail and fin from pieces of recycled styrofoam gathered in dump sites and held together with sticky tape. The wingspan is about one metre.<\/p>\n

“I started this when I was seven. I started picking things around, making some little projects,” the 21-year-old said.<\/p>\n

“Whenever I see an airplane flying, it gives me a very overwhelming joy.”<\/p>\n

Fatai’s labour of love is now propelling his dreams: a tech company gave him an internship after he was spotted piloting the plane — an important first step towards his goal of becoming an aeronautical engineer.<\/p>\n

“As our country is an under-developing country, so I hope to be a part of the people that will develop the country using this, my drone technology,” he said.<\/p>\n

\n

(Reporting by Seun Sanni; Writing by Hereward Holland; Editing by Estelle Shirbon and Ed Osmond)<\/p>\n

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LAGOS (Reuters) – Bolaji Fatai has never set foot in an airplane, but that hasn’t stopped him from building his own remote-controlled model aircraft from trash and sending it soaring over the sprawl and chaos of Lagos, Nigeria’s commercial capital. On a recent cloudy day, the single-propeller plane withstood cross-winds high above a sandy football […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":17351,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1222],"tags":[1223],"class_list":["post-17350","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-u-s-world-news","tag-updated"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-content\/uploads\/Reuters_Direct_Media\/USOnlineReportWorldNews\/tagreuters.com2023binary_LYNXMPEJ3J0BB-VIEWIMAGE.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17350","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17350"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17350\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17357,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17350\/revisions\/17357"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17351"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17350"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17350"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17350"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}