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Port Harcourt miles of railway were complete, and by the middle of 1916 the first loads of coal were arriving from Enugu via Aba. The town was carefully planned on the high ground west of the forty foot cliffs where Hughes' party landed in 1912 and which became the site of the harbour. Thus, as map 13 shows the railhead is sited beside the harbour and associated ware-houses; north of this area, west of the railway line, was the commercial centre, and west of this the spacious government reservation now known as the Old GRA; Southeast of the railway station and separated from the government reservation by quarter of a mile of open land, the African township, now known as the Old Township, was laid out as a less spacious grid-iron of streets.

From its inception Port Harcourt grew fast as the major port for Southeast Nigeria, becoming the provincial headquarters (originally of Owerri Province) in 1926, when government installations and departments were moved from Bonny. The official population for 1921 (i.e. the government reservation and the township) was 7,158, although the unofficial population would have been considerably more as at one time over 7000 labourers were estimated to be working on the wharves that were not completed until 1928 (Nwonodi). By 1953, the official population had reached 63,000 in Port Harcourt and neighbouring urban areas, but the actual figure was probably nearer 80,000.

The physical expansion of the city, between 1913 and 1953, largely took place on the high ground around the Old GRA and Old Township, between the Bonny River and Amadi Creek, and extending northwards along the line of the railway to Mile 3, Diobu.

21.3 MODERN DEVELOPMENT

In 1956 Shell moved its South Eastern headquarters to Port Harcourt and in 1967 the city became the capital of the newly created Rivers State, both factors that enhanced the city's growth potential together with its strategic position as the main port of the South East of an independent and economically strong Nigeria. However, despite being ravaged in the civil war (June 1967 to January 1970) which temporarily decreased its population, the city's fastest period of growth commenced when the Niger Delta became one of the world's most important areas of oil production in the 1970s at the same time as oil prices rose to their highest real historic levels. During this period, Nigeria was transformed into a middle income country and the richest in Africa.

In 1970 the total population of Port Harcourt was estimated to be 213,000, rising to 232,000 in 1973. Although these figures are for greater Port Harcourt (i.e. including Shell quarters, Rumuomasi, Rumuogba and Rumuokuta) they probably underestimate the unofficial waterside squatter settlements so that the real population of the city at the beginning of the 1970s was probably in excess of 250,000.

A number of factors contributed to the rapid growth of Port Harcourt from 1970 to the early 1980s. These were: job opportunities created by the city's position as the centre of the oil industry and a state capital; industrialisation and urbanisation generated by the oil industry and by the rapid growth of Nigeria's gross national product (an increase of 150% between 1975 and 1980); and the rapid growth of the national population (from about 40 million in 1960 to about 80 million in 1985), a disproportionate part of which was concentrated in the larger cities. Thus by 1980 it is likely that the population of greater Port Harcourt had reached 450,000.

Despite the collapse of oil prices in the early 1980s and the commensurate decline in Nigeria's gross national product (exacerbated by high interest rates on profligate borrowing in the late 1980s, so that GNP declined by 75% between 1981 and 1987, converting Nigeria back to a low income country), the reduction of urban employment 241