Port Harcourt, capital of Rivers State, is the acclaimed oil city and headquarters of the hydrocarbon industry and centre of Gulf of Guinea. Now, however, oil is moving offshore, and many say the oil city is in decline mode.

All the sources and analysts contacted in the week agree that Port Harcourt, just like Warri in Delta State, is in serious decline.

Where opinion seems divided is the actual cause of the decline: Could it be the steady divestment from onshore (land) to offshore (deep waters) by the major oil companies? Others say it is actually because of the endless political disputes and conflicts in Rivers State which began in 2012 over leadership of the state and control of resources. Yet, some analysts pin it to the 20 years of militancy since the first gunshot rang out at Marine Base area of Port Harcourt when Peter Odili was governor. Or, is it due to volatility from youth restiveness with excessive demands from companies for jobs, handouts, compensations, and land grabbing troubles?

Whatever be the cause, what seems obvious and incontrovertible is that the oil city is almost a shadow of itself, and nightlife, the city’s biggest feature, is down.

Those whose investments and businesses have much to do with night life such as K.O. Baba Jornsen, the Mayor of Pitakwa, who runs all manner of night shows, agrees totally that the city is sweating.

Jornsen, an entertainment investor and top promoter and top comedian, said: “I agree the decline is on. In the past, activities were much more available, events were there. There were many corporate sponsors but things have declined.

“A lot of companies have moved away from Port Harcourt. These were companies that had many top workers working in the city who were part of the value chain. Now, since 2013, we have been moving from one political crisis to the other. Most political leaders specialise in thuggery. That is the truth.”

K.O. Baba, a Diobu Boy, who has huge contacts with street boys and who is now into empowerment of the boys and economic rehabilitation, said since 2005, militancy began, many companies left. “From 2005 to now, many would expect that the leaders would have got to the point of repairing of the state. Instead, nothing is happening. Everything is on standstill. – Unending political crisis is the main cause. Yes, we are declining as a city, as a state.”

This view fully backed by a versatile city boy and NGO veteran who leads one-million-man-volunteers in the Gulf of Guinea zone with headquarters in Port Harcourt. He is Fyneface Dumnamene Fyneface, who studied harder again and just picked up a doctorate degree from one of the universities in the city.

He Is also the head of an international organisation called Youths and Environmental Advocacy Centre – Nigeria (YEAC-Nigeria). He seems first to know where something goes wrong in the state especially oil vandalism.

He said the Port Harcourt was truly declining. He gave immediate and remote causes. He agrees that movement to offshore is acting on the background, impacting everything else in the city and reducing investment appetite in Port Harcourt.

He however, said that the obvious factors people easily see include political crisis which he said was affecting business activities and lives of the people. He said this eventually has led to a state of emergency in the state which seems to totally cripple the economy because nothing new is coming to Port Harcourt, not even big conferences.

Fyneface said the type of politics played in Rivers is so toxic and destructive that everything else dies. According to him, nothing positive is being attracted to Port Harcourt. He said militancy which began in 2005 is a strong factor.

He said as one that meets diplomats and international groups, that Port Harcourt is quietly being removed from list of places where major things would happen. He recounted an incident where his group was to meet a diplomat but the fellow asked his team to rather come to Abuja, hinting that Port Harcourt is placed under ‘red alert’, meaning that certain grades of expatriates would not visit the city.

He also admitted that violent ways of agitation and demands from companies and demands for levies and taxes also chased high net worth persons away from the Garden City, just as it happened to Warri over the ethnic wars and youth restiveness that also ruined the once boisterous oil city.

Woes of night life

Investigations revealed that most ‘big boys’ that made Port Harcourt thick at night have either fled to Lagos or rather lying low in the Garden City but fly to Lagos (Lekki and Ikeja), Abuja, or even Cotonou outside Nigeria to flex at night. Some are said to take tables at bars at night worth N1.5m with their friends. They are called Niger Delta Big Boys when they storm the cities.

Sources said Port Harcourt night life has declined by 60% with some recording low sales of a mere 20% per night. Sources in the Performing Musicians Association of Nigeria (PMAN) told our Correspondent that they had cried out many times calling attention to the decline of Port Harcourt.

A survey showed that businesses in Port Harcourt, the Rivers State capital, have suffered as much as 60% loss in sales as the impact of onshore divestment by oil multinationals and the state of emergency declared by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu take toll on the state’s economy.

The survey of businesses at the GRA, Odili Road, Garrison and Computer Village showed between 60 to 80% loss in sales witnessed by enterprises within those zones.

Two popular night clubs in the GRA Phase 3 area of the state capital say if the situation continues, many enterprises would be forced to shut down.

Already, some business owners at the Computer Village are said to have relocated to Lagos following the harsh impact on the economy.

Moses Mozy B, state chairman of the PMAN, in an interview with our correspondent lamented the impact on the entertainment sector in the state.

The Organised Private Sector (OPS) in the state, in a statement obtained in Port Harcourt, had attributed the situation to political instability as well as youth restiveness.

Offshore trend

Nigeria is famed for having substantial offshore oil and gas resources which is often put at over 13bn barrel of oil with far higher estimation of gas reservoirs.

The Nigeria’s Upstream Petroleum Resources Commission (NUPRC) says deep water production represents over 40% of the country’s total daily oil output, at the moment, but this Is estimated to rise higher in the next few years going by huge volume of investments offshore.

In May 2019, the NUPRC also indicated that Nigeria’s deep-water reserves alone held an estimated 13 billion barrels of oil.

An expert and oil engineer, Fubara Gibson Dan-Jumbo, who delivered a paper at the Nigerian Society of Engineers (NGE) 2025 annual lecture, disclosed that projected GDP contributions of Nigerian blue economy sectors (approximate from various segments) for Offshore Energy & Marine Resources is $250B; Services & Blue-Tech $120B; Regional Trade/AfCFTA is $150B; and Maritime Trade & SEZ-driven industry $350B.

He said that Nigeria had total possible uplift of up to $1.5trn which he said was above current gross domestic product (GDP) levels for a country wishing to hit one trillion-dollar economy by 2030.

It seems clear to the oil majors and Nigeria’s economic planners that the wealth is now offshore and that drilling there is peaceful, though a bit expensive.

The twist

Other experts and sources have however, argued that it is not offshore move that hurt Port Harcourt, but restiveness drove oil majors into the deep water. Going offshore, they say, is rather a response to endless disturbance onshore with kidnapping, shutdown, blockages, etc. It is thus, wrong to blame the declining of Port Harcourt to offshore movement of IOCs.

For years, some indigenes in leadership in the industry had pleaded with the youths not to be vehement in fighting the IOCs. They said whereas the youths did not find alternative to survive but the IOCs had options and deep pocket to divest and flee either offshore or away totally from Port Harcourt. The hour seems to have come.

Rivers State was peaceful and was rising in investment appeal until the first shot on August 1, 2005, at the Marine Base, on the day Odili marked his birthday. It was a Sunday. The shot increased every Sunday until it became clear that the youths had taken to arms. That was the start of the Niger Delta militancy.

It spread to Bayelsa and Delta States and to all other states in the oil region when it was discovered that with a gun, attention would come. Governors began to pay for peace. Then, abduction of expatriates began and this fetched huge rewards. That was how demand for resource control turned to commercial agitation.

When Goodluck Jonathan became president, most of the big boys or ‘Generals’ moved to Abuja and Lagos as huge petrodollar filled their amnesty pockets, calculated at N60,000 per person per month for the over 20,000 registered militants who became ex-agitators. Much more was voted from the days of the late Umaru Musa Yar’Adua through Jonathan, Muhammadu Buhari, to now Bola Ahmed Tinubu, just to buy peace. Any attempt to scrap Amnesty has always led to threats. No president has thus, had the courage to scrap it.

This and kidnapping seem to have put so much money into strange pockets that the underworld seems bigger and stronger than the upper world (open world).

These forces thus, decide outcome of elections in Rivers State so much that whoever meets their demands would get their loyalty and would help to keep the ungovernable for any governor not in the good books of the person controlling them. This is said to have led to constant political instability in Rivers State.

Result is the decision of the big guns in oil industry to move into the deep water and pay to the centre.

Evidence began when most of the workforce of the IOCs began to buy up estates in Lagos and few other states. They first moved their families out of Port Harcourt, and eventually relocated too.

At a roundtable to evaluate the impact, an expert showed how one middle class family in 2015 was spending N6,000 per day. By moving such families to another state, Port Harcourt lost N6,000 per family per day, leading to decline in sales in super markets, markets, tailors, etc. The worst hit was Ivy and other top schools which have continued to be empty because the children of the upper class are now abroad, the children of the middle class are in Lagos. It’s only some few middle-class children that can be found in top schools in the Garden City.

Many say they pray for state of emergency to end soon so that the hopes that rose in May 2023 but dashed in March 2025 would bounce back for the real rebuilding of the Garden City to begin in earnest.

Thus, the classes are half empty, and children of the lower class seem to move into those classes at highly reduced rates just to keep them going.

Youth restiveness seemed to hit the state harder. People who bought lands would hardly get the peace of mind to develop them as waves of youths would storm the sites either for new payments or levies.

Other bands roam the state capital collecting levies and taxes from companies. Most companies have learned to use one office to run over five firms and pay one fee.

Some companies that braved the odds decided to build fortresses round their premises like they were in the war zones; all at huge costs.

Regret, regret and regret

Some Nigerians who were used to visiting Port Harcourt years back lament that they no longer recognise a city that used to bubble yesteryear. They said that the city seemed a shadow of its original self.

“I was in PH a few weeks ago and what I saw drove me to tears. By 9pm everywhere was as quiet as a cemetery. I asked some people why it was so; they said that the violence that had taken place over the years has negatively impacted the city. They also told me that politicians have ruined the city. While they leverage the state and the city to achieve their political dreams, they have wreaked havoc on the city. They have plundered the city,” a trained economist who was in Port Harcourt recently, said.

A technology expert, who introduced himself as Timothy Nnorom, said he grew up in Port Harcourt and experienced the heydays of the city, but he decried the current state of the city.

“Port Harcourt used to be a happening city where you see the big boys. The presence of big players in the oil industry made the city thick. In those days, PH used to be the headquarters of casinos, pools, night clubs, among others. In those days, there was no night in the city. But the city has gone dead, sadly,” Nnorom said.

Conclusion

Many say it is militancy, youth restiveness, invasion of companies, that forced companies out of Port Harcourt, rather than offshore move that is merely the last straw that may break the camel’s back.

It Is argued that most of the IOCs divesting in the onshore did not shut down but sold them to indigenes, who are still keeping oil operations going.

The case of SPDC (Shell) selling to Renaissance Africa Energy seems to buttress the argument. SPDC was operating at 133,000bpd but when it went to Renaissance in March 2025, in 90 days, production boosted to 230,000bpd. According to the Meshack Maichibi, the production director, the company hopes to hit 300,000bpd in January 2026 and 500,000bpd in next three years.

By this, most of the oil wells and stations that were idle are rather opening up and better days seem ahead because they would be employing more people who live in Port Harcourt and spend in the oil city.

By this, the divestment which is seen as evil for now may turn to blessing in disguise, yet the offshore would also be getting bigger as Nigeria fights to get to 3mbpd. Right now, many estates are opening up by investors mostly in the diaspora. House rent is heading to the roof in Port Harcourt even as the city appears to be in decline. (BusinessDay:, excluding headline)

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