Nigeria oil hub community in fight over waterfront home

• Nigeria’s oil city, Port Harcourt, is home to 500,000 people living in slums along its waterways.
• Governor Ezenwo Nyesom Wike has ordered the demolition of all informal settlements.
• Port Harcourt is the oil capital of Nigeria.

PORT HARCOURT, Nigeria: Acres of slums flank the waterways of Nigeria’s oil city, Port Harcourt, which is home to close-knit communities with more than double the population density of Manhattan.

The 50 self-built villages on the shore are made of concrete, wood, and corrugated sheets. They are home to 500,000 people, many of whom make their living from the polluted streams.

As a result of Rivers State Governor Ezenwo Nyesom Wike’s order to demolish all informal settlements, Port Harcourt’s residents are presently embroiled in a conflict over their houses.

Wike and Rivers’s officials described them as “dens of criminals” that needed to be cleaned up, but they offered no compensation for the destroyed dwellings and no plan for the land’s future development.

Numerous inhabitants resided there for decades. Their parents and grandparents built the land by filling the creeks with black, fibrous mud made from the roots of mangrove trees.

Since January, when the demolitions began, half of the Diobu community southwest of the city has been demolished.

In six days, up to 22,000 residents were rendered homeless. Where once there was a bustling neighbourhood, eleven hectares of debris now stand.

Tamunoemi Contrail, a local landlord and seafood vendor, recalled the beginning of the demolitions when officials accompanied by armed men arrived. “We were living quietly here,” she added.

“As they came, they did not talk to anybody. They just came down the steps and begin to mark X on some buildings.

Officials of the local government assert that the project will benefit the entire city and that the destruction of informal neighbourhoods is essential and legitimate.

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The property dispute in Port Harcourt exemplifies the difficult growth of cities in Africa’s most populous nation, which the United Nations predicts will be the third most populous in the world by 2050.

The majority of this expansion will be urban, with much of it occurring in slums, as Nigeria’s development plans neglect increasing informal urbanisation and suitable infrastructure.

Port Harcourt is the oil capital of Nigeria. However, despite the oil income, the infrastructure is overburdened and many people live in slums.

Isa Sanusi of Amnesty International Nigeria stated, “People do not knowingly choose to reside in informal settlements.”

“There shouldn’t be informal settlements in those kinds of places because the states are rich and they have the capacity to provide.”

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