Olagunju: small boy, big dream

Oluwatomiwa John Adetoyese Olagunju, a graduate of Aerospace Engineering from Florida Institute of Technology (FIT), Melbourne, Florida, United States of America (USA) from 2008 to 2013 at the age of 21, has at last fulfilled his childhood dream of being building and piloting an aircraft who built a prototype aircraft as part of their final year project. Incidentally, he dreamt of being a pilot at age seven and graduated as that at the age of 21.

His story started some 12 years ago at the Chevron Recreation Club, Gbagada, Lagos. The oil company then organized a drawing competition for the employees’ children on what they would like to become in future. They etched their dreams and aspirations on canvas with the usual excitement and exuberance associated with children of their age. Some of them had their dreams anchored on their immediate experiences. They dreamed of being doctors, engineers, bankers, geologists, broadcasters, music and sport stars, among others.

But for the young Tomiwa, it remained a pipe dream till after his secondary school education during which his dream inched forward for actualization. But the interesting thing is that Tomiwa is the son of Jummy Adetoyese Olagunju of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC)/Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR) Relations Department and so deployed all his creative abilities to fulfil his piloting ambition.

 As God would have it, he got an admission to the FIT to study Aerospace Engineering. He lived out his dream as a member of the eight-man team assigned to do their project on building an aircraft. His team built a prototype aircraft. So, what in his infancy years was a fantasy became real.

As a result, his dream has become much more engaging even in the face of the prevailing youths’ joblessness in Nigeria and remarkably Tomiwa was the youngest in his class.

His team’s project was tagged “the Vermilion Project” that was tasked to design and build an aircraft to carry the greatest amount of payload given certain restrictions, including use of a specific engine, a total size limit (225) in span + length ), and some material restrictions. The mission was to take –off in less than 200 ft, complete a simple flight circuit of a field, and land in less than 400 ft. the entire plane was built with a combination of bass, balsa and spruce woods.

‘The aircraft the team built had a 10ft wing span and it was 6.7ft long from propeller to tail. It weighed 19 pounds without the payout the payload and 45 pounds with the payload. Personally, I worked on the fuselage, tail aerodynamics and control system,’ Tomiwa said.

Tomiwa and his team soon began to make the headline as the Institute felt that what the team did was good enough to complete with some of the best from around world and so was entered for the society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) Aero Design East competition where they competed against engineering students from all over the world. His team ‘s aircraft successfully flew five times without crashing and was placed 12^th out of 40 schools.

David Fleming, Associate Professor, Aerospace Engineering, Florida Institute of Technology, and Faculty Adviser for the team, in an online interview with our reporter, said the competition rules required each team to design and build a specific model airplane engine.

According to Fleming, the objective was to take off in a maximum distance of 200 feet, carry the greatest possible payload for a circuit around the airfield, and land safety on the runway. Each team got five flight attempts to carry successively greater loads. While many of the planes broke up in flight, and lost control, the Florida Tech team, successfully completed all five flights.

Professor Fleming described the feat as an outstanding result for a team of students who had never previously built a model aircraft, and with no experience in this competition.

“As a faculty Adviser for the team, I am very proud of their accomplishment. They represented Florida Tech with distinction and produced a very worthy competitor.

“They were competing against an international field of competitors. The top four finishers were from Brazil, Manitoba, Brazil again, and Poland, respectively, and most of the high –ranking schools have a long and continuously history of competing in this competition”, he said.

Studying and graduating as an Aerospace engineer though challenging was most exciting for Tomiwa. “The course was definitely a fun ride, but it was by no means a piece of cake. It was challenging and the best part of it was from the beginning, we were given projects and assignment that would prepare us of the future,” said Tomiwa.

The major highpoint was the successful completion of the senior design project which is now on display in the department. All of these would have been a pipe dream but for the support of Tomiwa parents and Chevron. Tomiwa was been a beneficiary of the company Recognizing Excellence and Achievement (REACH) International Scholarship Programme since 2008.

 He said the REACH award remained a vital part of his success story. H said the REACH scholarship helped him a lot because apart from helping with my tuition and payment for books, it also helped psychologically to feel that a company big like Chevron considered him qualified enough to receive the scholarship.

“My parents are also a strong factor. My father has always taught me not only to work hard, but to work smart and always think about the big picture. He also taught me never to limit myself but to push harder to become great. My mother encourages me and strengthens my belief, belief in myself and God,” he said.

Asked what motivated him to embark on building the aircraft, he said in third year at the University, they were tasked with coming up with ideas for their final projects and he quickly keyed in into designing and building an autonomous aircraft that would be able to drop a payload at a given specifications. Although I was not able to do that project, I was assigned to a similar team to build a remote-controlled aircraft and the experience was definitely more fulfilling than I imagined.

Asked how he feels being a Blackman in a white dominated environment to carry out that project, Tomiwa said FIT has a diverse campus and has a wide variety of people from all over the world, stressing “to be honest, race was not really a factor in my experience here”.

But what really motivated him to study the course? He says “I’ve always been fascinated with airplanes, rockets and flight in general and when I stated thinking about my career, I initially wanted to be a pilot. But as I got older I developed a greater interest in what goes on behind the scenes. I did a little more research and decided to study Aeronautical/Aerospace Engineering in university. I could recollect watching the TV with parent when I was about seven years old. We saw a plane crash with many causalities. The question that came to my mind as a child then was, ‘is it not possible to design aircrafts that will not break into pieces or explode any accident? That was when my dream grew bigger about aircraft and flight.

Having achieved his childhood dream, it is time to fly with it. But Tomiwa said it is not enough to qualify as an engineer, he still has his eyes fixed on the bigger picture. He needs to build an edge in a highly competitive world. This ambition has compelled him to apply for a Master degree programme in Engineering Management at the FIT, which he hopes will help to integrate his engineering knowledge with business practices.