Scary minutes in the hands of thugs

Arriving in Port Harcourt, one of Nigeria’s most active cities, earlier on Tuesday, dozens of queries ran through my mind. Almost two years since I visited the Rivers State capital, much hasn’t changed about the city except that the traffic situation has improved a bit.

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.