Port Harcourt is the capital and largest city of Rivers State, Nigeria. It is the fifth-largest city in Nigeria after Lagos, Kano, Ibadan and Kaduna. It lies along the Bonny River and is located in the Niger Delta.Port Harcourt is second largest southern city of Nigeria. The city is enriched with raw oil which attracts thousands of potential businesses to invest and trade locally.
Port Harcourt is one of the most beautiful West African cities, blessed with deep sea ports and natural sandy beaches. The port was constructed in 1912 by Frederick Lugard, the governor of both the Northern Nigeria Protectorate and the Southern Nigeria Protectorate, and its original purpose was to export coal from the mines near Enugu, Nigeria. The town was formally named Port Harcourt after colonial secretary Lewis Harcourt a year later.
Prior to the creation of the port, the area was occupied by the Ijo and Ikwere people but they were forced to give up their land by the colonial government to build the port. During the First World War, Port Harcourt was used as a point of military operations against Central Powers in nearby German Kamerun (now the nation of Cameroon). When crude oil was discovered nearby in 1956, the port became the center of the country’s oil economy.
As that industry continued to expand in the post-Nigerian independence era (after 1960), Port Harcourt underwent modernization and expanding urbanization as it became Nigeria’s second largest seaport and the major commercial center in eastern Nigeria. Port Harcourt’s crucial importance was recognized by the Nigerian government when the city was captured by Nigerian army and naval forces on May 19th, 1968 from the Republic of Biafra.
Port Harcourt, port town and capital of Rivers state, southern Nigeria. It lies along the Bonny River (an eastern distributary of the Niger River) 41 miles (66 km) upstream from the Gulf of Guinea. Founded in 1912 in an area traditionally inhabited by the Ijo and Ikwere (Ikwerre, Ikwerri) people,
it began to serve as a port (named for Lewis Harcourt, then colonial secretary) after the opening of the rail link to the Enugu coalfields in 1916. Now one of the nation’s largest ports, its deepwater (23 feet [7 metres]) facilities handle the export of palm oil, palm kernels, and timber from the surrounding area,
coal from Anambra state, tin and columbite from the Jos Plateau, and, since 1958, petroleum from fields in the eastern Niger River delta. Port Harcourt has bulk storage facilities for both palm oil and petroleum. In the 1970s the port was enlarged with new facilities at nearby Onne.
Port Harcourt is one of Nigeria’s leading industrial centres. The Trans-Amadi Industrial Estate, 4 miles (6 km) north, is a 2,500-acre (1,000-hectare) site where tires, aluminum products, glass bottles, and paper are manufactured. The town also manufactures steel structural products, corrugated tin, paints, plastics, enamelware, wood and metal furniture, cement, concrete products, and several other goods.
Nigeria’s first oil refinery (1965) is at Alesa-Eleme, 12 miles (19 km) southeast. Pipelines carry oil and natural gas to Port Harcourt (where there also is a refinery) and to the port of Bonny, 25 miles (40 km) south-southeast, and refined oil to Makurdi in Benue state. Port Harcourt is the site of boatbuilding and fishing industries and has fish-freezing facilities.
The University of Port Harcourt (1975) and Rivers State University of Science and Technology (1972, university status 1980) serve the town, and nearby Onne is the site of the Nigerian Naval College. Port Harcourt is the starting point of the eastern branch of the Nigerian Railways main line and also of the trunk highway network serving eastern Nigeria.
There is an international airport located 7 miles (11 km) north. Pop. (2016 est.) urban agglom., 2,075,000.
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