Lambertian Thoughts on Engineering and Politics
By Prof Celestine Ntuen
Informed by a dossier of accomplishments of the Late Obong (Dr.) Lambert Mark Udoh, I am privileged to be asked to champion the story of this great man through an organized Memorial Lecture, which for the most part, is usually conceived from the stance of academic environments. Today, we shall accord our own son the same academic ritual with rigour, pomp, and pageantry.
Like the family members and friends of the Late Dr. Udoh, I am overcome by the nimbus cloud of heavenly tears. For the family, especially the children, I can hear the drops of rain. Borrowing from Shruti Gauba the poet, let me use this opportunity to say to the family,
Don’t keep the weight you carry,
let it go in the tears you cry,
and once the rains are over,
You’ll see a rainbow in the sky.
Back to the topic of the day with the theme– Late Obong (Dr.) Lambert Mark Udoh:’ A Colossal Politician and An Engineer’. My job is to lay the foundations for many recitals and citations that will be presented by the invited distinguished lecturers.
Colossal fits the description of the man, whom by the gesture of Mboho Nto Okon, seeks to immortalize what many of you may call an enigma—a man rarely understood.
Late Obong (Dr.) Lambert Udoh was great in all that he did in life: in education and in the practice of politics. He was visibly coloured by his introvertive personality type. He can be described generically to compare with his psychological cohorts of quiet and introverted dispositions as in such persons of Albert Einstein (Physicist noted for the theory of relativity); Bill Gates (Noted for computers); Steven Spielberg (noted for best movie-making); and Mark Zuckerberg (the inventor of Facebook).
But, hold your thought before you question my gallantry tributes without the feelings of any physical objects of attributions. Listen to the Late Obong Udoh introduce himself:
“Dr. Lambert Mark Udoh, an elected member, represents Ikot Ekpene II Federal Constituency, Akwa-lbom State. An indigene of Ikot-Ekpene, he was born in Ikot Igwe-Okon, Akwa-lbom State on September 29, 1943. He is a holder of B.Sc (Chemisty), M.Sc and Ph.D (Industrial Engineering and Operations) degrees he obtained from the universities in the United States. Dr. Udoh is the Managing-Director of Hymark Nig. Ltd. and Chairman, Aba Textile Mills Ltd. And Systems Industries and Chemicals Ltd. Lagos. He is married with six children. His hobby is tennis.” (Source: https://blerf.org/index.php/biography/udoh-dr-lambert-mark/— Blerf’s Who’s Who in Nigeria (Online): Edited by Nyaknno Osso posted on March 30, 2017.
Being modest as he was, he did not want to sing about his many accolades such as,
- The first Okon son (maybe in Essien Udim LGA) with a Ph.D degree in Industrial and Operations Research (1979).
- The first Okon son (maybe in Essien Udim) to serve as a chairman of a major political party as in the National Republican Convention in Akwa Ibom State (1990-1992) with sole administration of the State Party in the absence of a Governor from March 1993-November 1993.
- The first Okon son to serve as a Member of the National Constituent Assembly (1988- 1999).
- The first Okon son to contest for the Senate (2006).
- The founder of LAMDA Construction and Engineering (1992- Death).
THE ENGINEER AND POLITICIAN
Tertiary Education
After obtaining a B.Sc degree in Chemistry (1971) from Howard University, USA, Late Obong Udoh proceeded to obtain a Master of Engineering Administration with a concentration in Industrial and Technical Operations (1975) from the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences in George Washington University, Washington, D.C., USA; Master of Science Degree in Industrial Engineering and Operations Research (1978) and a Doctor of Philosophy Degree in Industrial and Operations Research (1979), both from Massachusetts, Amherst, MA, USA.
Late Obong Udoh studied Industrial Engineering because of its vast application, to wit:
Industrial engineering is an engineering profession that is concerned with the optimization of complex processes, systems, or organizations by developing, improving and implementing integrated systems of people, money, knowledge, information and equipment. Industrial engineering is central to manufacturing operations.” (Wikipedia)
Two traditional theories or concepts taught in Industrial Engineering helped to broaden the management scopes of Obong Engineer Udoh. They are, the theory of Scientific Management by Fredrick W. Taylor [1] and concepts of job analyses proposed by a couple in the persons of Frank and Lillian Gilbreth [1], respectively.
Taylorism is often referred to as a System of scientific management advocated by Fred W. Taylor. In Taylor’s view, the task of factory management was to determine the best way for the worker to do the job, to provide the proper tools and training, and to provide incentives for good performance. Taylor’s Scientific Management is a revolutionary theory that changed the way in which organisations manage their workflow. This theory is commonly used as a pivotal reference to the management of organisations that seek efficient and productive use of economic resources to achieve productivity. Late Obong Udoh applied Taylorism in the management of several complex organisations he was involved.
The second major foundation of industrial engineering is the time-and-motion study advocated by Lillian and Frank Gilbreth for analysis of the time spent in going through the different motions of a job or series of jobs. The approach has yielded success many tools for standardization of work and in checking the efficiency of people and equipment and the mode of their combination. In general, the time-and-motion study is “Science of eliminating wastefulness resulting from ill-directed and inefficient motions”
As an Industrial Engineer, Late Obong Udoh also undertook intellectual excursions into the field of Operations Research, a broad discipline focused on applications of mathematics to solving many daunted human problems with analytic rigour.
Operations Research is a systems analysis tool that employs various mathematical techniques to provide quantitative-based solutions to management problems. Operations research analysts advise managers and other decision-makers on the appropriate course of action to solve a problem.
As a practical engineer, we can see clearly why immediately he return from the USA to Nigeria in 1979, he was quickly employed as a Senior Industrial Engineer, and later as a Principal Engineer from 1979 to 1981 at the Ministry of Trade and Industries, Calabar, Cross River State. He later left to Lever Brothers Nigeria Limited as an Industrial Engineer from 1981 to 1982. When OBODEX Nigeria Limited was looking for an Operations Manager, it was time for Late Obong Udoh to take the position for three years from 1982 to 1985. While at OBODEX he saw an opportunity to start his LAMDA Construct and Engineering Limited. All these to the tributes of his flexible and vast applications of industrial engineering education.
Listen to his colleague, Senator Christopher Ekpenyong who worked with him at OBODEX:
In all spheres of endeavour that he found himself, he applied the acquired knowledge in his area of specialty to practice very well. He ensured effective implementation of all projects assigned to him as well as managing people effectively. That truly defined him as a good manager and as a good leader.
Political Life
Politics to the Late Obong Lambert Udoh was not an accidental profession. Industrial Engineers and Operations Researchers are often employed by the government for the purposes of improving work efficiency through the use of strategic, operational, and tactical planning tools. Late Obong Udoh was taught the arts of taking risks and how to play political games from the first principle of Game Theory [2], a class taught in Operations Research as a course.
Politics can generally be referred to as an individual or collective involvement in government whose purposes are to develop policies and programmes for harnessing a country’s natural resources for the development and protection of individual citizens.
Game Theory as often applied in politics is the branch of mathematics concerned with the analysis of strategies for dealing with competitive situations where the outcome of a participant’s choice of action depends critically on the actions of other participants.
Game theory was originally developed by the Hungarian-born American mathematician John von Neumann and his Princeton University colleague Oskar Morgenstern, a German-born American economist, to solve problems in economics. Game theory is widely used in political affairs, which is focused on the areas of international politics, war strategy, peace bargaining, social choice theory, strategic voting, political economy, and so on. The rationality of actors and the choice of strategies are some of the basic assumptions of game theory.
Placing the above backgrounds in the context of Late Obong Udoh’s professional ambiance, you can agree with me theoretically, that by using his retrospective memory, we can reconstruct some of his mental processes with many resultant objects of his mind. We can consider his interest in politics as one of such resultant objects. He started to develop interest in politics by first visualising how the government works. The journey then started with his appointment as the Chairman, Board of Directors of International Biscuit Limited, Ikot Ekpene. The sequels that followed were embellished with political landscapes: Member of the National Constituent Assembly; State Chairman of National Republican Convention, Contested Primary election to the Senate, and many series of Federal Republic of Nigeria Committee appointments. Until his demise, he remained loyal to the People Democratic Party (PDP) causes. His adeptness and loyalty to his party cause are against the surgency of the new political game, which he studied in queueing theory (Operations Research) as reneging (wagering from one line to another looking for most payoff opportunities). It is favourable known today as “political prostitution.” A behaviour I believed he detested.
RECONSTRUCTING LAMBERTIAN THOUGHTS IN HIS ABSENCE
As taught in Industrial Engineering, Operational Research, and recently in Cognitive Sciences, we can deduct from many accomplishments of Late Obong Udoh, several substrates of human thoughts that guided his professional thinking and in dealing with society. Late Obong Udoh was, like every human, an enigma. His own was with characteristics of an engineering scientist–prudency, observant, and always analysing situations.
Once in 2019, we happen to cross each other’s part by engaging is an epistemological question, one of which he posted first: after reading your profile (referring to me) online, “why are you interested in complex systems?”
My answer was swift and to the point, ‘because human and the world agents are complex.’
I went on to explain that I studied Industrial Engineering and Operations Research because I wanted to analyse human-machine systems to understand the interrelationships in many applications, specifically, aviation and space. He (Late Obong (Dr) Udoh added that he was interested in organisational management, especially, technical projects. Proceeding with his usual calm demeanour,
people do not ask what I do and why an engineer suddenly practice politics full time. Well may be, you will help me market my academic background to the public.
The year 2020 was horrible with COVID-19 pandemic terror to the world. We could not continue with our discussions on the paucity of Industrial Engineering analysts in Africa, and notably in Nigeria. Late Obong (Dr) Udoh left in 2021 without our collaborative solutions to the problems of Industrial Engineering shortage in Nigeria.
In his absence, I am forced to apply a constructive simulation tool as an approach to predicting what he could have proffered next. This has led me to consider a simple hermeneutic logic of predicting events (which I studied in a computer simulation class as a requirement to prove hard to solve thinking problems that require computer solutions). This is similar to the detective trying to solve a puzzle. Behind hermeneutic logic in a computer simulation is the assumption that, maybe, one can tumble through a large sampling space of likely events to look for a good enough solution—strictly by exploration with divide-and-conquer surrogates.
When applied to political solutions, hermeneutics models tend to make people believe “that power consists in making others believe that one has a political secret”. Late Obong Udoh, had that secret from his education which you and I cannot decipher. I call this Lambertian codes.
As an example, after partnering with late Udo Ekpro to seek the second leadership position in Akwa Ibom State failed, he applied the Lambertian code to explore optimal alternatives by introspective simulation of his personal game strategy (his chase board of the mind). The result landed him in Obong Victor’s Camp without experiencing destabilizing marginalisations.
CONCLUSIONS
It is said that what we cannot create we do not understand. I cannot create the mind and the thought substrates of the Late Obong Udoh. However, in the studies of Human-Machine Systems Engineering, I have had the privilege of recreating and reconstructing scenarios from accident scenes or crime scenes involving homicides through simulated thinking.
Embolden by exposure to the myriads of information on the Late Obong Udoh, my presentation was to reason from the first principle of Artificial Intelligence which advocates the analysis of information to discover trends and correlations through statistical similarities, and hypothesizing “what if”, “what next”, and” what could have been” situations.
Retrospective knowledge is what informs the conjectures of this presentation. People who had contacts with late Obong Udoh may have different opinions. You can use any adjective to qualify him—enigma, introverted, colossal, misunderstood, and so on. One fact stands out, that he was a system analyst who understood the arts of technical and people management and applied learned analytic tools to succeed in politics and as an engineer.
An analytical mind must have imagination. Imagination has always been an indicator of human intelligence. Late Obong Udoh had it. The power of imagination can transform the reality around us because new ideas enable us to innovate. We, the humans, and the human mind carry all the power we need inside ourselves already. We have the power to imagine better, and imagination makes it possible to experience a whole world inside the human mind.
For those who could not understand the nature of the man while he was alive, this paper attempts to explore what it was for him to imagine his world and survived in it in the presence of other hostile foes and friends. Late Dr. Udoh’s imagination can best be explained through the seminal work of Wolitzky [3], a professor of MIT, who blends the power of analytics rigour in game theory to illuminate observed behaviours of politicians across a range of political and social institutions.
My last direct encounter with Late Obong Udoh was on April 21st, 2021 during a Memorial Lecture to eulogise Late Dr. Joseph P. Udondata, one of the finest intellectuals from Okon Clan. Shortly after the lecture, we discussed the good, the bad, and the worst parts of the programme so that we can learn a lesson. When I interjected him on the issue of failure, he replied to me with an analytic insight, which hitherto, had not heard much from him. Hear him here:
I am a great believer that the Probability of Success is the negation of the Probability of Failure. If I need to accomplish something we might debate forever what success would be. So, we start without even being able to even know what success would look like, much less how to achieve it.
The above statement constitutes a part of Lambertian code with its underlying pandora box.
Finally, the Late Obong (Dr.) Lambert Mark Udoh is like Shakespear who in many of his literary works, have embedded codes still difficult to decipher. It is currently, in late 2007 that the British television series, “The Shakespeare Code” in its the second episode of the ((the third series of Doctor Who that have attempted to portray the hidden secret of Shakespeare plays. For example, the three Carrionites allude to the Weird Sisters from Macbeth (which was written several years after the setting of this episode); like them, the Carrionites use trochaic tetrameter and rhyming couplets to cast spells.
The colossal and enigma of the engineering profession and politics has left us behind. Accepting the reality or not. His footprints, biometrics, and other signals of his genetics codes live on to torment our imaginations about his life—positively or otherwise.
Adieu to a fellow Industrial Engineer and an Operations Researcher who had successfully applied his technical skills to (and in) all his endeavours to make a living in politics.
Celestine A. Ntuen, PhD, FIIE, MNSE
Distinguished Professor of Engineering & Vice Chancellor
Ritman University, Ikot Ekpene
Distinguished Professional Research Fellow, Nigerian Defence Academy, Kaduna
With permission, allow me to stand in an already established protocol.
