Port Harcourt

Port Harcourt,¹ the capital of Rivers State, is the second largest port of Nigeria. Located some 64 kilometres from the Atlantic Ocean, Port Harcourt was developed on a bend of the Bonny river, where a bluff of solid land lay close to deep water. It was laid out in 1913² in response to a need on the part of the colonial government of Nigeria for effective control of the hinterland, in order to tap the vast oil palm resources of southeastern Nigeria and to facilitate marketing of coal which had been discovered in the Udi hills near Enugu in 1912.³