Port Harcourt
resulting in low wages, low capital investment in urban infrastructure, and insufficient budgets to maintain services. Because the majority of the citizens are poor and thus have little economic power, what improvements are made to the city do little to benefit them. In particular most incomes are insufficient to pay the economic rents necessary to stimulate the private construction of low cost housing. Moreover poverty means that people cannot pay for the services that they need. Also poverty encourages corruption in civil servants which makes the management of the city and the provision of basic services inefficient.
A better distribution of wealth would stimulate the internal city economy including the construction of low cost housing and reduce poverty. However such an improvement could only result from a reform of the macro-economic policy of Nigeria as a whole, which is unlikely. Similar reform is also necessary to reduce the rural poverty that induces people to migrate to Port Harcourt, and is similarly unlikely.
Thus the city's chronic housing shortage is set to get worse so that living conditions will continue to decline commensurably. However, as much of the infrastructure already exists to provide piped water to most of the city, it should at least be possible to improve the water situation with better management, and thus to raise levels of sanitation and reduce the incidence of easily preventable diseases and thus health costs.
Otherwise the future of Port Harcourt looks grim: living conditions will get worse and, in particular, the physical and mental health of the population will decline further, putting additional strains on an already chronically disabled health service. The answer to better health is not, of course, just better treatment, but better living conditions.
In terms of city management, not only are tens of thousands of new houses required every year in addition to improved water provision and better waste disposal services, but also better management and higher civil service salaries to discourage corruption. Planning needs to be based on a regional Greater Port Harcourt development plan of some sort. However, given the present socio-economic political conditions, such a plan is unlikely to be adhered to, so that, in any event, a great deal of the future growth will be in the form of illegal residential settlements. However such a plan might be able to ensure that industry is sensibly sited and that adequate provision is made for basic services such as water to the places where development (legal or otherwise) is likely to take place. Moreover it is necessary to discourage settlement in unsuitable low-lying locations and encourage settlement on the higher ground (in the LEM ecozone) perhaps with the provision of basic services such as water and transport to the places of employment.
The ecological footprint of the city on the Niger Delta will become heavier particularly in terms of water pollution of the Bonny Estuary and associated offshore waters. Also with increased industrialisation and dependence on motor transport air pollution will become more of a problem than it is now.
The long term economic health of the area will depend upon five factors:
- industrial diversification, so that the economy is not entirely dependant upon oil;
- successful rural development in terms of agriculture, forestry, and fisheries, so that economic development throughout the region is balanced, which will reduce the rural-urban drift;
- maintenance of the ecological integrity of the Niger Delta as a whole by integrating environmental management into the development process, and thus conserving the valuable resources of the Niger Delta that contribute to the wealth of the city;
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