If the authorities of the University
of Ilorin accede to suggestions
by members of the institution’s
Drone Team, it is highly probable
that the University will, in future,
monitor examinations conducted within the campus with drones. The drones, developed by a team
coordinated by Prof. Sulyman
AbdulKareem of the Department
of Chemical Engineering, added
colours to the just concluded
40th anniversary/31st convocation ceremonies of the
University. Other members of the Unilorin
Drone Team include Dr. M.T.
Yakubu of the Department of
Biochemistry; Dr Babalola of the
Department of Physics; Engineer
Eric and Mr. Ahmed, both of the Department Electrical and
Electronics Engineering. In separate interviews with Unilorin
Bulletin last Thursday (November
12, 2015), the Co-ordinator of
the team, Prof. AbdulKareem, and
another key member of the team,
Dr. Yakubu, said that drones can be used to monitor the conduct
of examinations in future as well as
general campus surveillance in
conjunction with the security
personnel”. According to Prof. AbdulKareem,
“the use of drones has come to
stay because where you don’t
want to endanger human life, a
machine, which a drone is, can go
there and still get the information you need”. He pointed out that
“drones, rather than infringing on
human rights, actually protect
human rights because the man who
wants to do evil and knows that a
machine can remotely capture his act, will not likely do it”. The Unilorin Drone Team
Coordinator, who is the immediate
past Vice-Chancellor of Al-Hikmah
University, Ilorin, disclosed that
some academic departments in
the University have started showing interest in the use of the
drone. He said, “I believe that
apart from giving practical
knowledge to those in Geography,
Electrical Engineering and Physics,
virtually any Department that may have a reason to capture events
beyond what is in front of the
camera, which has to be aerially
covered, can use the drone.” Prof. AbdulKareem urged the
University administration to
challenge people to do more
“because there are lots of
students who are eager to learn
and who have ideas that they can put into practice if they have
good supervision. He said, “I
believe it is a matter of
encouragement. Most Nigerian
universities should be able to do
wonderful things and make major breakthroughs”, noting that some
students were co-opted into the
team to learn how to operate or
fly the drones. The Drone Team Coordinator
enjoined the newly appointed
ministers especially for the areas
of science and technology, “to
see a need for us to self-develop,
self-evolve, and self-emancipate as a nation”. He said, “For a long time now, we
have relied on personnel from
foreign countries to bail us out of
every technical problem we get
into, but the issue is that, we have
so many Nigerians that are trained abroad that are here and even
those who have not left the
country that are equally talented
that should be encouraged to do
wonderful things for the nation.” Prof. AbdulKareem maintained that
the new ministers “should see
their appointments as a chance of
working with the academics in the
educational institutions to
promote what will be good for the nation, to make the nation as a
whole self-reliant on personnel
that are available locally.” In the same vein, Dr. Yakubu said,
“We can also use the drone to
monitor what is happening on our
borders; we have a very vast
amount of land, and we can use it
to track activities that are going on there. Invariably, we can use
the drones to cover the entire
University and in getting
information to the appropriate
quarters. ”