12 Aug 2007 |
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Port Harcourt: A Paradise Lost Countries are defined by the beauty or ugliness, literal or metaphorical, of their cities. In every part of the world, leaders invest in the building of cities because it is the soul of the individual cities that defines the soul of the country itself. It is perhaps trite logic that you judge a people by the character and nature of their immediate environment. When you visit South Africa, what you remember are the cities and their individuality, rhythm, pace: Cape Town, Johannesburg, Pretoria, etc. In the United Kingdom, visitors refer to such cities as London, Manchester, Liverpool, Oxford, with a certain accent on character and history. It is the same in Germany, as you move from one city to the other: Munich, Frankfurt, Bonn, Berlin...you cannot but notice that which makes each city special. A city that is well-planned and organised serves the purpose of the residents, the country and its visitors. A city is both a social and psychological referent; a symbol of human organisation.
Here in Nigeria, something terrible has gone wrong with our cities, and there is no greater illustration of this than the madness that has overtaken the city of Port Harcourt. In the past week, that city has been in the grips of pure anarchy. A group of hoodlums, reportedly belonging to rival militant groups have taken over its streets. They are engaged in a bitter war of attrition. They are shooting anything in sight and anything that moves. For the past 48 hours, the city's residents have been trapped in their homes. They dare not go out. Shops are closed. Even government has been shut down. Where are the security agencies: the police and the army? They are helpless. The terrorists are armed to the teeth and they are also donning police and military uniforms.
Some persons who ventured out of their homes, perhaps in error cannot fully tell their tales of woe and misery. People were gunned down at bus stops. Those who were a bit lucky were asked to raise their arms and surrender to the terrorists. There is a full-scale war going on. The war is not coming from a neighbouring country, it is internally generated, and at the last count, 20 people have been killed. The city of Port Harcourt is already becoming a ghost town: those who can still do so are fleeing towards neighbouring cities and villages, creating an instant refugee crisis. The Governor of the state, Celestine Omehia, the Chief Security Officer of the state is so scared he now moves about in a convoy of armoured vehicles. It was reported during the week that the militants are planning to kidnap the Governor and sack the Government!. It is surreal. It is crazy.
President Umaru Yar'Adua is said to have asked the Chief of Defence Staff, Andrew Azazi, and Mike Okiro, the Inspector General of police to relocate to Port Harcourt to save the situation. A Joint Task Force is also on the ground, defending the city against the hoodlums. The fact that Azazi and Okiro have to be drafted to Port Harcourt simply underscores just how helpless government appears to be. It is an admission of complete breakdown of law and order and the failure of the state in managing what has all along been a foreseeable situation. Since May 2007, Port Harcourt has been on the boil literally. It became the theatre of mindless abduction of oil company workers and infants.
Each time the hoodlums struck, either the Federal Government or the state Government immediately negotiated with them and paid the required ransom. In its well-meaning but desperate attempt to ensure peace in the South-South, the Federal Government was far too willing to do the bidding of anyone who threatened public peace or promised to ensure peace. And so Asari Dokubo and former Governor Diepreye Alamiyesiegha became official consultants on the Niger Delta. When you cut deals with terrorists and their masters, you make the kind of situation we now have in Port Harcourt inevitable. The hoodlums have become so bold, they are taking on the entire Nigerian state and shutting down one of its major cities. Sending Azazi and Okiro to Port Harcourt may be a good way of expressing concern but it is a panicky attempt to cover up official confusion.
Gunmen have taken over Port Harcourt because of the failure of the intelligence agencies and the lack of foresight on the part of government. Okiro, the Police Chief is said to have boasted: "We want to confront these hoodlums head on. On this lawlessness we see in Port Harcourt, we are here to make sure that it is stopped. The hoodlums have been confronted by the JTF today." Empty boast, if you ask me. Okiro also reportedly added that the Joint Task Force has drawn up strategies to address the crisis. So they are just coming up with strategies? Where were they while the militants acquired arms and ammunitions, including rocket bombs? This is not the time for empty talk and promises. The Federal Government has a responsibility to ensure the security of lives and property in Port Harcourt. The least that it can do for now is to begin by declaring a state of emergency in that city. The leaders of the rival gangs are well known: names have been mentioned, the hoodlums on the streets are not ghosts either, they are human beings, flesh and blood, the state must take the battle to them and stop negotiating with criminals.
The problem in Port Harcourt started with the kidnapping of oil company workers, and the mouthing of revolutionary slogans. But soon enough, the terrorists also began to kidnap and molest Nigerians. They have since moved beyond ideology to crime. Oil company workers and foreigners have been fleeing from the city; Nigerians have also started leaving the city in droves or staying away from it. And we must all note something: one of the points made by the militants recently is that they are causing so much problem because they need to get even with the politicians who used them during the elections (2003, 2007), only to get into office and ignore them.
They promised to kidnap both politicians and their relatives and make the area ungovernable. It is perhaps not an accident that the collapse of Port Harcourt as a city began in the last eight years. The hoodlums who are now kings of the territory acquired power and influence under the watch of political Godfathers who used them as political thugs and armed them with sophisticated weapons. The elections are over; the genie is out of the bottle; the boys with the arms and ammunition have found a new occupation in terrorism. And the matter is now beyond the Godfathers who dare not declare their association with "the boys" too openly. We are paying the price for bad leadership and bad politics.
And it is so sad to witness once again the fall of a city that was once known as the Garden City. During the civil war, Port Harcourt was a theatre of war, but it recovered part of its lost beauty and attraction in the 70s and 80s. It was a Garden where Nigerians of all groups came together and lived happily in search of peace and fortune. The presence of oil refineries, ports, oil companies and their workers had also turned it into a great cosmopolitan and industrial centre. It was the city of lovely hotels, a multilingual, multicultural society where various influences co-existed in fine harmony. Port Harcourt was indeed one of those cities that Nigerians loved to talk about: it was the Lagos of the South South, a thriving centre of commerce and culture. Originally known as "Igwe Ocha", it is named after Lewis Vernon Harcourt, 1st Viscount Harcourt (1863 - 1922) who was Secretary of State for the British Colonies from 1910 to 1915. When the city port was established in 1912, there had been much controversy about what to call it. In August 1913, the then Govenor-General of Nigeria, Sir Frederick Lugard wrote to the Secretary of state for the colonies; "in the absence of any convenient local name, I would respectfully ask your permission to call this Port Harcourt."
And Lewis Harcourt, unfortunately a sex pervert, had replied: "It gives me great pleasure to accede to your suggestion that my name should be associated with the new Port." It is this same city that has now been overtaken by sin and crime. Satan has taken over the Garden and on the streets can be found young men wielding guns and machetes and who are saying like Satan in John Milton's Paradise Lost (1667) that it is "better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heaven". In Port Harcourt, we are witnessing a version of the fall of man and the fall of a city. Paradise is lost. The Garden has been defiled. It is desolate. Beauty has given way to ugliness. The fall began with the politicians who allowed the city to gone to seed; that failure is now being compounded by those whose inward state of mind has been overtaken by "high passions, anger, hate/mistrust, suspicion, discord..."
And as it is with Port Harcourt, so it is with many other cities in Nigeria. Our cities have become hollow and deathly shells. The city of Lagos was also once a Garden, but not anymore. It has been overtaken by potholes, defiant armed robbers, pollution and terrible congestion. I do not know too many people who are living in Lagos and are really happy. The residents worry daily about the stress of living in a difficult city. Ibadan was once promoted as a cultural and intellectual capital. It is now in the hands of armed thugs. The intellectuals still live in the city, but they dare not raise their voices lest the thugs remove their heads with machetes. Owerri was also one of those cities. It used to be called the cleanest city in Nigeria with beautiful residential layouts. Not anymore.
Kaduna was another lovely city. Kano too. But both cities bear the ugly scars of religious fanaticism and the murder of so many innocent persons whose only offence was that they belonged to another religious faith. It is difficult to count up to five major cities in Nigeria where the quality of human life is close to international standards. Many years ago, Nigerians used to go on holidays in their own country. Children from the hinterland came to Lagos and they visited the Race Course, the Museum, the National Theatre, the University of Lagos, Marina etc. Not so anymore. The Race Course has been taken over by Area Boys, there is nothing in the Museum, the National Theatre is about to be sold. Couples went to Port Harcourt from other parts of Nigeria to have a honeymoon. Who would dare go near Port Harcourt today for anything called honeymoon? It may be suicidal to do so.
The collapse of Port Harcourt is a metaphor for the Nigerian condition. And so when President Yar'Adua tells Azazi and Okiro "go to Port Harcourt and bring down the violence immediately. And also resolve all the issues precipitating the violence", he is in fact treating the ailment, without addressing the root-cause. If the two security chiefs fail, the President may also have relocate to Port Harcourt!
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