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Port Harcourt In My Dreams By Farouk Martins, Omo Aresa
My first visit to Port Harcourt was just before the war on excursion from School. As a Federal Government worker in the eighties I also had the privilege to visit some centers built in the then 19 States of the Country. All I saw in Port Harcourt was the Lagos I grew up in wishing I could retire there. Actually one of my aunts was also called Mama Porta as a little boy, so my dreams of this beautiful City went way back.
Since those days many of our cities have changed leaving us good memories while confronting today’s realities. Port Harcourt has so many places of interest we could enjoy ourselves without any fears. By the second day in the hotels, many of us go out for local dishes. Our best friends were the CVU drivers because they knew every corner. They also love to see us in the City as there is some natural bond, may be because some us tend to discard the old line between drivers and oga. Who dare try that free movement now?
As I read and listen to different accounts of the mayhem that had gone on, being repeated and may persist as in many of the cities in Nigeria, I wonder if Port Harcourt can regain or be restored to its former self. It was a cosmopolitan City that was accommodating as many of our cities all over Nigeria. For this and many reasons, many Nigerians feel at home and comfortable enough to uproot their families and live in Port Harcourt.
The war dislocated our psyche in many places we called home outside our base. Mistrust and loss of confidence set in and many Nigerians lost their bearing. If you hare not been displaced, it is very easy to tell a man and his family to pack and desert the only known place they had called home in their own conscious generation. You would think some people are waiting for them at the other side of River Benue or Niger willing to help them reestablish their home and business. The easiest comparison is that of Nigerians fighting to death rather than obey deportation from foreign land. In this case, it is their land too.
I still remember the cry of an older friend I met in school outside Nigeria. He was so old I foolishly thought then, I asked him why post-graduate at his age. He first told me he was getting ready for the new technology in the field. By the time he told me his whole story and why he had to leave Port Harcourt after he was well established, it became a sad tale. That was not the Port Harcourt everyone knew. Well, circumstances and people change.
This lawlessness and wanton disregard for African civilization has eaten so deep in our character, dogs have started eating dogs. What we have now in Port Harcourt and many of our cities are bull dogs that have turned against their owners. There are not very many ways to explain the recent and incessant plight of the innocent people in Port Harcourt who are afraid to move from one location to another as they have done all their lives. We hear about foreigners being kidnapped, I am talking about indigenes that have lost the freedom of movement.
Gangs and militants are roaming the streets like war lords of Somalia and getting paid in millions not to explode. Those who have kept peace, remained abiding to our culture, and respecting law and order have become the weaklings in their own society. At one point, they were fighting for their party, then they wanted justice for the poor, it changed to control of their resources; and now? We do not even know. When people start looking at the sky for answers, you know we are in trouble.
All the tales of our wows are probably the easy part, the solutions are so narrow because they are usually from a selfish perspective. We have tried and explored so many avenues. It usually ends in the use of force. Force itself creates excesses as we see in Odi, Zaki Biam and a host of other places. Shoot and kill order was given in Lagos. There must be something else Nigeria is good for no matter how difficult we are. We are the ones that restore peace in Congo in the sixties and lately in Liberia. We need peace in Nigeria.
There must be a formula for peace in Port Harcourt that can be employed in Oyo, Kano, and Anambra. If we keep on doing the same thing and we keep on failing, we must change our recipe for peace. The problem with force is that we do not have enough man power to make peace hold everywhere all the time. It will also be naïve to think that force can be eliminated as part of recipe for peace.
If we start by the way of arbitration, the simplest basic understanding that whoever is going to enforce peace or law and order in our different locations must be a neutral body. Where does it come from? Nigeria can not rent mercenaries to ensure peace and we hate to go to self serving Colonialists who will only use us as spies against one another. We may need to look inside Africa for solution. But remember that Libya, for example, is also part of Africa. We may even differ on someone like Mobutu and agree on Lumumba both of who have passed on but led the same divided Country. Or ask the Tutsi and Hutu.
The only hope may be within Nigeria. There are more sub-ethnic groups in Nigeria made up of many ethnic groups in Africa. Within these ethnic groups, one area in Nigeria must be able to find another ethnic group across the Niger who we can trust to restore lasting peace between Ife and Modakeke, between Fulani and Kanuri. One of these ethnic groups should be acceptable to all factions in Katsina regardless of their political affiliation. May be that is what we need in Port Harcourt to restore the old glory to that beautiful City.
Of course, nobody has all the solutions. Nigeria is disintegrating from inside. I mean from within. In other words, each ethnic group, each sub-ethnic group up to the tribal level is disintegrating within itself. This has gone beyond one ethnic group against the other, it is a case of a core center that can not hold itself in place and may disintegrate out of our orbit’s centripetal force. No part of Africa wants pieces of blemish in its territory. |