Nigeria's Port Harcourt Gang Rivalries

Port Harcourt is quiet again but no one thinks the peace is secure. Soldiers still patrol the town and its nearby creeks. Every rural area has a military monitor. An evening curfew has emptied bars and packs the streets at the end of the working day as people leave the town for the villages.

Though Nigeria's huge wealth springs out of the soil[of Port Harcourt] and the nearby seabed, the city's slums are overflowing, roads are rotten and jammed. Rural people complain of oil pollution and neglect from both government and oil companies. Protest movements, starting in the mid-1990s, were at first peaceful, then became violent. Recently, the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) as become notorious for kidnapping foreign oil men and demanding ransom.

During elections in 2003 and 2007, violence erupted again. Celestine Omehia was sworn in as Rivers's governor in May; in August, rival gangs fought for patronage on Port Harcourt's streets. Accusations of favouring one cult over another were hurled at the governor, though he denied paying any thugs at all. Chief Edwin K. Clarke, a leader of the Ijaw people, says he has proof that the state paid militants as much as 100m naira a month.

This article from The Economist shows an interesting sitution between two rival gangs. It is interesting that the gangs have shown a lull in fighting. It elicits the question of why this is happening. The article suggest that it is because of increased military supervision and increased government legislation. If this is true, the problem need to be addressed more permenantly, so that similar conflicts can be solved in a similar manner.