In order to promote clean, efficient energy development that complies with environmental regulations, Mustapha Gajibo, a Nigerian university dropout born in Borno State, Northeast, has made history by becoming the first Nigerian and the first person in Sub-Saharan Africa to locally produce electric vehicles from scratch.
Although the 30-year-old young prodigy was unable to finish his studies at the University of Maiduguri in Borno State, northeastern Nigeria, he has still joined a lengthy line of famous people who have made major contributions to society and the entire world.
Along with his young design team, Mustapha Gajibo created electric buses that can go 200 kilometres without recharging their batteries. The buses are currently in service in Maiduguri, and he intends to increase their reach soon to make them the first domestically produced electric vehicle in Sub-Saharan Africa.
In 2012, Mustapha Gajibo was given the chance to enroll at the University of Maiduguri, but he chose to study general agricultural science rather than electrical engineering. He needed to ask for a course correction.
He was allocated mechanical engineering rather than electrical engineering, which worried him, but he accepted it. But as chance would have it, he left his undergraduate mechanical engineering degree at level 3.
At his workshop, Gajibo has already removed the internal combustion engines from ten minibuses and swapped them out for solar batteries. The buses, which have been in service for a little over a month, can drive 100 kilometres on a single charge, he told reporters.
They will be furnished with batteries and solar panels. The young inventor predicts that he will begin selling electric vehicles built in Nigeria to other African nations and the rest of the world within the next five years.
