Emmanuel S. Eneyo

Emmanuel S. Eneyo was born in Samanga (a village in Andoni territory of the Niger Delta region of Nigeria) on March 3, 1955. Nigeria, the most populous African country with a population of about 100 million people, is made up of about 250 ethnic groups. His parents belong to the Andoni ethnic group commonly referred to as the Andonis. The Niger Delta region of Nigeria, home to about 20 ethnic groups including the Andonis, is considered to be one of the richest oil and gas producing regions in sub-saharan Africa. The Andonis, with an estimated population of about 450,000 occupy a territory that lies between Bonny to the west, Ibibio to the east, Ogoni to the north and the Atlantic Ocean to the south. The Andoni territory, typical of the riverine section of the Niger Delta, is segmented and divided by bodies of water, and the bulk of the settlements are low lying islands surrounded by mangrove swamps. The rest of the Andoni flats stretch all the way south until they hug the Atlantic Ocean in an embrace of one of Nigeria's most spectacular natural coastal sceneries. Being mainly island dwellers the primary occupation of the Andonis is fishing.

As a child growing up, Emmanuel Eneyo engaged in the art of fishing as the principal occupation of his parents. Like most Nigerians from the south, he is from a Christian family. Because his parents understood the importance of education, they struggled to send the children to school with their meagre income. He received his primary education at St. Paul's Anglican School, Opobo Town. Upon completion of his secondary school education at Birabi Memorial Grammar School, Bori, Ogoni, he worked for the Nigerian Ports Authority, Port Harcourt for two years. He came to the USA in August 1976 for further studies on a Federal Government Scholarship.

In August 1976, he started his engineering education at Oklahoma State University. Two years later, he transferred to the University of Southern California, where he received both the BSISE and MSISE degrees in 1980 and 1981 respectively. In his professional career, he has worked for Rohr Industries, Inc. (a California-based aerospace firm) as a senior plant engineering analyst in charge of developing automated plant maintenance systems and budgeting systems for corporate projects. Prior to that, he worked for Bechtel Power Corporation and Rockwell International, Inc.

In August 1984, he entered the Ph.D. program in Industrial Engineering at Purdue University. During his graduate work at Purdue, he held a position as a Graduate Instructor in the School of Industrial Engineering for two years. He joined the engineering faculty at Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville as an Assistant Professor in December 1989. He is presently an Associate Professor of Industrial Engineering and the academic advisor for the student chapter of the National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE). He is a senior member of the Institute of Industrial Engineers (IIE), the Society of Manufacturing Engineers (SME), Computer and Automated Systems Association of SME (CASA), and a member of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS), the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE), Alpha Pi Mu, and Tau Beta Pi. As part of his professional career development, he has been a consultant to a number of manufacturing and service industries in such areas as facilities design, productivity improvement, development of production management systems, technology transfer, and software engineering.

He is equally involved in a number of community-based non-for-profit organizations. As a founding member of the Rivers State Foundation (a non-for-profit organization established to advance the economic and development interests of the people of the Niger Delta region of Nigeria), he is currently the Secretary to the Board of Directors, and Regional Director (Region 3) of the Foundation. He is also the Treasurer for the Andoni Forum (USA), Inc.

Last update: January 23, 1997, by eeneyo@siue.edu