Finding our way from the airport to a decent hotel in the centre of the town, different sights greeted me and my colleague – Stanley Ogidi – an award-winning photojournalist, as the taxi driver edged us deeper into the bowels of the oil-rich enclave. With traders dangling wares at motorists’ faces, mentally-derailed men and women in different attires pausing to dance or scare passersby intermittently and young men standing above several gallons of petrol by road corners, waiting for potential customers, it was a mixture of the good, the bad and ugly in the very heart of Port Harcourt.
While my first day in Rivers State this time left me asking more questions than on any previous visits, Wednesday, the second day, was all about work for me concerning this weekend’s and April 11’s governorship and national assembly elections. Starting out with a visit to the office of the Independent National Electoral Commission in the state on Aba Road, one of the longest routes in Port Harcourt, for my accreditation, I rushed out to gather information on the increasing fuel queues at some filling stations in town, after I was told the Public Relations Officer in charge of accreditation for journalists was not on seat at the time.
The revelations from the filling stations visited were shocking – many sold a litre of petrol at N110 and even N150 – far higher than the approved rate of N87. The hardship witnessed by motorists, especially commercial transporters, was sickening. Great news for me only days away from a major election in a land richly blessed with oil.
A familiarisation visit to the state command of the Nigerian Security and Civil Defense Corp on the Olu Obasanjo Road in the GRA axis of the town, made the dash out of INEC’s office quite fruitful. The Public Relations Officer of the command, Mr. Akin Oguntuase, promptly shared vital information I requested.
Back at INEC’s office later in the afternoon, Stanley and I got our accreditation after waiting for a while for the home team – journalists stationed in Rivers – to be attended to first. While accreditation was ongoing, some of us were treated to a light session of comedy. Old men — very old men — and even young ladies who had bleached off their first layers and were cracking gum like the type who parade the streets of Allen and Opebi in the Ikeja area of Lagos at unholy hours, tendered introduction letters from all sorts of media houses with strange names. The women on the table burst into laughter at the strange names when I had almost choked myself with the same. At that moment I knew the election was not going to be easy in violence-prone Rivers with reporters from something like Red Alarm Platform— also on the field with the rest of us chasing stories. All the same, it was a worthy side attraction on my second day in town and three days to the presidential election.
But on Thursday, our third day in Port Harcourt, my colleague and I got a little scare. While inside a vehicle taking us to PUNCH office at Mile 1, where our senior colleague, Mr. Chukwudi Akasike — a nice fellow and brother – was waiting for us to meet and strategise ahead of Saturday’s poll, Stanley, being an experienced and curious photoman, spotted a sea of women and children with different sizes of gallons struggling to buy kerosene at an NNPC Mega Station around the Lagos Bustop area of town. He asked us to disembark so he could take some good shot. ‘Flick, flick, flick’, Ogidi Baba, as some of us call him, had taken more than a few cover shots with his professional camera and smartphone. Looking to get an aerial view, he walked into the station to see how he could achieve that. That was when trouble started. Two fierce-looking guys rounded up him and started harassing and asking him about who gave him the permission.
My man beckoned on me and I, not sensing any trouble, approached them calmly. All our explanations that we were just journalists doing our job fell on deaf ears. The dudes took us across the road, to a shop where their leader, addressed as Number One, was seated with a few others.
“Who una be? Na APC una dey work for abi? Dem send una come spy us abi? Wetin you wan do with foto of people wey dey buy kerosene? Answer me before I change am for una now,” one of the guys asked us in pidgin. After much harassment from them and plea from us, they deleted all the vintage shots Stanley had taken with his phone before allowing us to go. They made it clear that they were for PDP and whoever tries to preach APC around them would be soaked in blood. It was a little scare for the two of us and a crazy way to begin our third day in the city.
Generally, apart from a few party loyalists, a majority of the residents are not so enthusiastic or excited about this weekend’s presidential election. While many of the people appears to have reached an agreement on who to vote for at the presidential level, the divisions and problem has always been on who should be the next governor of the state. They will never align on this path.
As a result of rising tension, most parts of the city now retire to bed early. In some places, it is goodnight as early as 8:00pm – a distant contrast to what the situation used to be before this time. This weekend’s election appears to have slowed down the pace of almost everything in Rivers State. As a journalist here to cover the elections, my first few days in Port Harcourt have simply been a mixture of exciting and scary tales.
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