Welcome to Port Harcourt!
Port Harcourt is a gulf city and capital of Rivers State in the Niger Delta area of South-South Nigeria and is the center for the oil industry in the country. English is generally spoken, but Ikwerre (the indigenous language) is also spoken, and Pidgin English is widely spoken across all demography, as found in most parts of the country.
Port Harcourt (Pidgin: Po-ta-kot, Ikwerre Igweocha) 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. As of 2016, the Port Harcourt urban area has an estimated population of 1,865,000 inhabitants, up from 1,382,592 as of 2006. The population of the metropolitan area of Port Harcourt is almost twice its urban area population with a 2021 United Nations estimate of 3,171,076. In 1950, the population of Port Harcourt was 59,752. Port Harcourt has grown by 150,844 since 2015, which represents a 4.99% annual change. The area that became Port Harcourt in 1912 was before that part of Fishing settlements (fishing ports) also called Borikiri in the Okrika language and the farmlands of the Diobu village group of the Ikwerre ethnicity. The colonial administration of Nigeria created the port to export coal from the collieries of Enugu located 243 kilometers (151 mi) north of Port Harcourt, to which it was linked by a railway called the Eastern Line, also built by the British. In 1956 crude oil was discovered in commercial quantities at Oloibiri, an Ijaw settlement, and Port Harcourt's economy turned to petroleum when the first shipment of Nigerian crude oil was exported through the city in 1958. Through the benefits of the Nigerian petroleum industry, Port Harcourt was further developed, with aspects of modernization such as overpasses, city blocks, and taller and more substantial buildings. Oil firms that currently have offices in the city include Royal Dutch Shell and Chevron. There are a number of institutions of tertiary education in Port Harcourt, mostly government-owned. These institutions include Rivers State University, University of Port Harcourt, Kenule Besor Wiwa Polytechnic, Captain Elechi Amadi Polytechnic, Ignatius Ajuru University, and Rivers State College of Health Science and Technology. The current mayor is Victor Ihunwo. Port Harcourt's primary airport is Port Harcourt International Airport, located on the outskirts of the city, the NAF base is the location of the only other airport and is used by commercial airlines Aero Contractors and Air Nigeria for domestic flights.