Evolution of Drones in Nigeria.

Every nation has her unique history of drone evolution. Some had early head-start while others were left to play catch-up. Some of the earliest world re-known drone user include USA, UK, Australia amongst others. Each nation has her peculiar history but the unifying factor is that most drone manufacturing nations all had very humble beginning. Today, Nigeria proudly classed itself as a drone manufacturing nation. Evolution of drones in Nigeria itself started from civilian population experimenting with the newly introduced technology.

(Mr Aghogho Ajiyin from Delta State Nigeria with his drone.)

Steadily, with the help of expert, Nigeria began improving on its rustic civilian versions of drones. Thus, in late 2010, the Nigerian Air Force Institute of Technology unveiled Nigeria's first officially recognized indigenous drone. It was called Amebo.

(A NAF Personnel during a visit from a government delegation.)

Features of Amebo

• Customisable flight control software

• Waypoint navigation

• High speed real time image processing for on-board Geo-location and Target Tracking

• Up to 40 km VHF communications

• Modular and mobile GCS

Application Areas of AMEBO

• Pipeline Monitoring

• Border Patrol

• Mapping

• Traffic Monitoring

• Disaster Monitoring

• Maritime Patrol

• Aerial Surveillance

• Pest Monitoring and Control

Even though Nigeria joined the league of drone manufacturers late, it has made tremendous progress thus far. Rapidly, the Amebo drone was replaced by a better and more sophisticated version. It was named Gulma. The Gulma obviously was bigger, better and covers more distance than the previous Amebo.

(CGI of Gulma.)

(A NAF technician working on Gulma.)

(Fmr. Pres. Goodluck Jonathan during commissioning of the drone.)

Feature of Gulma

• Service Ceiling: 3000 feet
• Max Take-off Weight: 65 kg
• Endurance: 4 hours
• Height: 1 metre
• Wingspan: 4.4 metres

Application Areas of Gulma

• Surveilance
• Policing Operations
• Disaster Management
• Convoy Protection
• Maritime Patrol
• Pipeline and Power Infrastructure monitoring.
• Border Patrol
• Wildlife Management

On February 15, 2018, Nigerian Air Force made another giant leap in the foray of drone manufacturing with the unveiling of Tsaigumi. It was built by NAF Aerospace Engineers in collaboration with UAVision of Portugal. Since the Tsaigumi is just a UAV, it has no attack capability. The proposed sequel to Tsaigumi, Ichoku, will have a ground attack capability. Ichoku will definitely be a UCAV to watch out for.

Features of Tsaigumi

• Endurance: 10 hours
• Service ceiling: 15,000 feet
• Mission radius: 100km
• Maximum take-off weight: 95kg
• Payload: Electro-Optic/Infra-Red camera system (EO/IR)

(PMB Commissioning Tsaigumi.)

Application Areas of Tsaigumi

• Intelligence Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) operations
• Policing operations
• Disaster management
• Convoy protection
• Maritime patrol
• Pipeline and power line monitoring
• Mapping and border patrol

(Pres. Muhammadu Buhari in Tsaigumi Command and Control Centre.)

Others:

• Protection of wildlife
• Weather forecast and telecast
• Search and rescue
• Coastal monitoring 

In less than a decade, Nigerian drone technology evolved from the crude homemade drones from Nigerians to a sophisticated government made Unmanned Aerial Vehicles. Still, Nigeria is not stopping at that, the next generation drone capable of combat missions will soon be unveiled. Till then, we will keep our fingers crossed.