I often talk about Port Harcourt city in Rivers State Nigeria with a lot of nostalgia. This is born out of the fact that life for me as an adult really began in the oil city in early 1998. Again the beauty and attraction of Port Harcourt to most Nigerians is seen in its economic endowments which know no creed or race.

This is manifest in the city being host to the Oil and Gas Free Zone, which serves oil and gas industries in the West African sub-region. It also has a petrochemical plant, two refineries, a fertilizer plant, and the nation's second busiest seaport, the Nigeria Liquefied Natural Gas (NLNG) and other multinational oil companies.

Because of the strategic location of Port Harcourt, the city has for decades, been home to hundreds of expatriates working in the oil and gas sector. This informed the decision to commission an international airport to open the region to increased domestic and international air traffic. Flight operations between neighboring African and European countries such as Cameroon, Sao Tome and Principe, Togo, Benin Republic, Ghana, Britain, France and Germany take place at the airport. Importation and exportation of oil and gas exploration, materials and equipment as well as personnel are also airlifted and shipped through the airport and the seaport.

Then in 1998 I was just one amongst very many young university graduates awaiting the mandatory National Youth Service Corp (NYSC) program that really desired posting to the oil rich city. That desire, then, was premised on the very high potential it offers graduates on immediate employment because of its fast growing and buoyant economy.

These was not limited to just NYSC Corpers but also their parents who in most cases paid bribes to any one who could help facilitating NYSC posting of their wards to the city. I am also aware that this was not just a scenario in the NYSC circle. Even federal civil servants and staffs of banks insisted on getting transferred to Port Harcourt city, the land of milk and honey.

I was therefore greatly elated and copiously congratulated when without any inducement whatsoever I was among the group of ‘lucky Corpers’ posted to the oil rich city in February 2008 for that year’s service. This event came with a lot of hopes and prospects for especially, being a young geologist. It also stirred bits of jealousy and envy amongst colleagues who were posted to far away lands even after ‘sorting’ and ‘seeing” relevant contacts for posting to Port Harcourt.

This did not really end there. The desire for Port Harcourt did not just wane on getting the posting to serve in Rivers State. It became more intense at the NYSC orientation camp, then at The College of Education Ndele as most corpers at the camp intensified lobbying to get into the city itself (Obio-Akpor and/or the Municipal Local government councils) itself.

At the Ndele camp, Corpers desirous of serving in Port Harcourt city deplored every weapon in their arsenal to realize that dream. The female corpers in most cases were very willing to give anything even if it means trading with their bodies while the men never rested in their oars too. The men bribed relevant officials with gifts and money just to get placement into the city.

Today, this unabashed and envious longing for Port Harcourt seems to have dramatically waned. Life in the city has now turned brutish and rough like as in a jungle. This is very pathetic with the sad turn out of events. Miscreants, hoodlums, anarchists and all sorts of delinquents have overtaken the city. This takeover regrettably is holistic and total as both the leadership and subjects (dwellers) are not really innocent.

What we read and hear every day on the media are all sad tales; Killings; Deaths; Explosions; Kidnapping; Robberies etc and all sorts of sad tales that keep one agitated and afraid to visit the city anymore.

Mr. George Onah reporting for one national newspaper on recent events in Port Harcourt, the garden city has stated as follows; “For many residents, the capital of Rivers State, hitherto the Garden City where life was lived to the fullest is no longer the place to live in as rivers of blood flow ceaselessly following an unending siege by militants, kidnappers, cultists, and criminals of other hue”

“Violence in Port Harcourt, Rivers State has gone full circle and the guns are still booming. The casualties are pilling, even as blood of defenseless citizens’ flow endlessly. Neither the Police nor the government has answers to the brigandage. Security outfits do not have official figures, record or reliable estimates of casualties in the Rivers State orgy of killings”.

“Even the number of deaths during the Nigerian Civil War had a consensus of informed opinion on the number of deaths, on both sides, which hovered, realistically around 600,000 and below. But the rapidity of casualties in the onslaught by gunmen on Rivers State cannot simply be pigeonholed. The currency of killings is alarming and the growth of the economy of the state is heading for the deep”.

“The pattern of the crime ranges from kidnapping of expatriates and children of wealthy parentage, to outright violent robbery. Cultism and political vices equally occupy a frightening position on the crime chart. The volatile atmosphere appears to have annulled whatever achievement of the peace and reconciliation committee of the government”.

Just last week (and it is continuing this week) it was rife that the adulteration of petroleum products have taken a destructive centre stage in the city. This became public knowledge when residents of the city raised alarm over the sales of illegal and adulterated petroleum products in the streets of the city.

It is said that traders of these products are hoodlums in the city as they are always armed with dangerous weapons as they perfect their acts, and no arrest has been made by the police in the city. The illegal sale of the product is evident mostly in Niger, Victoria, Gambia streets all in the state capital without any harassment from the security agencies even as the traders were patronized by dealers and the public.

News has it that petroleum products are now always diverted to the open streets for sales as the hoodlums terrorize the major dealers of the products with arms. It was also learnt that filling stations in the city no longer have petroleum products for sale because tanker drivers prefer discharging the product in open streets for the hoodlums rather than in the approved filling stations.

But this is just a scratch of the emerging real life scenario in the city. The real story and a sad one at that is the continuing scenarios of kidnapping and broad day light murders going on in the city, the once famous garden city.

Also last week soldiers were yesterday drafted to the Rivers State Government House in Port Harcourt as the exchange of gunfire between rival cult groups which has characterized daily life in the city, since Tuesday continued.

Mostly affected by the shootings and detonation of dynamites were the Diobu and Sangana areas of the city where sporadic gunfire rented the air leaving passers-by scampering for safety. Police Armored Personnel Carriers (APC) patrolled the streets, often helping to open road which the shootings had either closed or blocked in the deliberate move by the rampaging cultists to continue the siege on the town.

Between Nsukka and Udi streets, no fewer than four dynamites were detonated by the cultists and each time, the explosion sent people running in different directions. The popular and busy Ikwerre road was like a graveyard. Banks on Ikwerre and Aba roads which had opened for business early in the morning had to close to customers most of who besieged the gates asking to be allowed in to withdraw money.

It was reported that the problem arose because a cult group was said to be angered by the alleged patronage of a rival group by the political powers (the state government) in the state. This allegedly made rival groups to want to prove that they were relevant as well. Lending credence to this the leader of the Niger Delta Peoples Volunteer Force, Alhaji Dokubo Asari,   accused the Rivers State Government of sponsoring the crises which it was not willing to stop.

Sadly these sad tales continues to move in tandem with events of the recent past. About a month ago some gunmen stormed Holy Rosary Girls Secondary School in Port Harcourt, shot dead a senior teacher, Mr. Sunday Egba in a broad day light.

Mr. Egba was said to have been preparing to leave the school at about 2.30pm when he received a call from some unidentified persons who asked to come to the school gate. He was said to have been chatting with his students when he received a call, he excused himself went out to meet the callers at the school gate but as soon as the agricultural science teacher who hails from the war torn Rumuekpe community in the city came out of the gate, three gunmen who were on motorbike opened fire on him. The gunmen after shooting their victim escaped and left him in his pool of blood, he died a few minutes later.

The students of the school who wept and mourned profusely afterwards challenged the Rivers State government and the security agents to curb the insecurity and incessant killings in the state, particularly in Port Harcourt. Sadly, the situation is yet to abate.

In the heels of that murder was the most bizarre and complicated of these crimes which took place on Monday, July 23. The sun which was said to be descending in the horizon was also being replaced by a shallow moon. Under that was a crowd of jolly, merry go-lucky young and old people, clustered around a small house. Music blared from the loudspeakers of car radios, parked along the busy Lumumba/Ojike Streets, in the densely populated Mile I, Diobu area.

One Mr. Braide and his folks were in party mood, in the family house, over his appointment as commissioner. The house itself, cutting the features of colonialism, is tucked at the intersection of two streets and overlooking the United Evangelical Church, in the opposite direction. With two entrances, punctuated by face-me-I-face-you tenement rooms, the house opens up into a modest courtyard that is lined by bathrooms and conveniences whose doors are made of corrugated roofing sheets.

As the party freaks enjoyed themselves, a band of five AK-47-clutching young lads rode up and down along the busy street, peeping into the crowd each time they rode past. Then suddenly, the five motorcycles rode into the premises and in a flash, the five men, who looked to be in their early 30s secured the place.

It was reported that “three of them blocked the busy road, stopping every movement along the street, shooting into the air as they took positions. Two others ransacked the crowd, which gathered at a small drinking place attached to the building, dispossessing them of their phones and money,” an eyewitness said. But the unfolding drama totally removed suspicion of robbery as the major reason for the onslaught.

 It was learnt that shortly after the operation outside, accompanied by rapid burst of gunfire; scores of those partying ran into the compound. While those living in the compound scampered into their rooms, shutting themselves in, the visiting party guests having no where to hide simply wandered about in the yard, searching for space to hide, following which they decided to perch behind drums used in storing water. It was like the ostrich hiding its head in the sand and concluding that it cannot be spotted.

The men and women who used the drums as their shield and thought that they had escaped the gunmen were damn wrong as two of the armed invaders breezed into the compound and headed straight for drums where three of the party guests hid themselves. Standing atop the concrete slabs of a septic tank, the monstrous men pointed the nozzle of their AK-47 riffles at the men, frantically squeezing the triggers and pumping volleys of bullets into them at very close range.

When the dust settled, two men laid dead. The gunmen casually strolled away, without as much as asking or taking anything away from them. The killers did not search the rooms either, after which they mounted their motorcycles and rolled off towards Uruala Street, also in Diobu. One of the murdered men was said to have had a striking resemblance of robust physique with the commissioner. The instant shooting of the man, may have triggered the theory in the city that the men came for the commissioner and not to rob.

It was suggested also that the robbery was merely a by-product or an indirect consequence of the assassination attempt on the new commissioner’s life. Toeing this line of reasoning, the state police commissioner, Mr. Felix Ogbaudu said the rampage at the Braide’s was a fallout of political grumbling.

In the city these days especially the Diobu area in particular, the fear of darkness is the beginning of wisdom. As a result, residents of Diobu area of the city approach the night with trepidation. The streets are deserted as early as 8.00 pm, leaving marauders to ply the neighborhood unchallenged.

As the killings continue in the city, the Rivers State government has assured that it was fully prepared to combat the upsurge in violence while protecting the lives and property of residents. Reacting to the Braide incident, the government, through the Commissioner for Information, Mr. Emmanuel Okah said, “We condemn the attack in very strong terms. We call on the Police to attack the problems in the manner it deserves. Government will assist the Police and other security agencies to function in their duties”. Asked about whom the government thought was responsible for the incident, he said “it is only investigation that can prove those responsible for the attack”.

It was also reported by a national newspaper that the attack on the Braides preceded another robbery, in which an American, Prof. Michael Watts, who came into the city only a few days earlier, was ambushed at the door of a local newspaper on ‘D’ Line area of the city. Prof. Watts, who is said to be a researcher on the Niger Delta region, had gone to a commercial bank, hoping to cash some money that was being sent to him.

However, the money did not arrive, so Watts headed for the office, only to be accosted by eight gunmen, who demanded that he surrendered the money he had just withdrawn from the bank. Sources said the academic told the hoodlums that he did not withdraw any money and that all he had on him was six hundred US dollars, which he promptly gave the rogues.

Angered by the prospects of a failed robbery, the men opened fire at the American, injuring him on the hand and critically wounding the security man working for the newspaper. The police have no answer to that incident yet, just as Ogbaudu said he was yet to know about the robbery, because the DPO in the area has not briefed him.

Other stories include serial kidnapping of oil workers and children of elites living in the city by militants. Cases of this nature have continued to increase on daily counts despite their scary nature. The overall consequence today is that living in Port Harcourt has become a nightmare. Residents are afraid to freely move around anymore.

The inability of the security agencies and the government to confront the challenges imposed by these crimes is regrettable. There is not doubt that what is happening in Port Harcourt contradicts the Niger Delta struggle. What is required therefore is a more tailored and strategic plan devoid of partisanship or political bias. The Rivers State government should deploy the abundant resources at its disposal to solving this persisting problem of insecurity.

No dividend of democracy could be said or seen to be greater than security of life and property of the people. With unabated insecurity the city of Port Harcourt will not only grind to a halt but will go into irretrievable ruins.

I plead that no effort be spared in returning the city to its hospitable and camaderie times which is fast getting eroded. Criminals should not be offered any home in the city. I think this should become Governor Celestine Omehia’s immediate priority today. Any other thing is certainly off the tracts.