FROM VILLAGE TO SUBURB; CLASS AND COMMUNITY IN THE PORT HARCOURT PERIPHERY. (THE CASE OF WOJI TOWN).

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FROM VILLAGE TO SUBURB; CLASS AND COMMUNITY IN THE PORT HARCOURT PERIPHERY. (THE CASE OF WOJI TOWN).

TABLE OF CONTENT

i. Certification

ii. Dedication

iii. Acknowledgement

iv. Table of Content

v. List of Table

vi. Abstract

Chapter One

INTRODUCTION

1.1 Port Harcourt, Growth and Development

1.2 Scope and Problem

1.3 Methodology

1.4 Limitation

Chapter Two

2.1 Production, exchange, and classes;

2.2 theoretical frame work

Chapter Three

LITERATURE REVIEW

3.1 Migration and Development of Suburbs

3.2 Woji Neighbourhood

3.3 Land ownership and allocation in Woji

3.4 Woji New Town

3.5 Federal Low-Cost Housing Scheme

Chapter Four Discussion of Findings

4.1 Woji Village, Class, Biology and Community, The Case of Elijiji Road

Chapter Five

5.1 Conclusion

5.2 Bibliography

Appendix

ABSTRACT

The development of Port Harcourt as a colonial espitalist city saw the concentration of different categories of people, differing in cultural back ground and economic specialization. Rapidly, there a modern class structure, denoted by employer-employee relationships.

In addition, congestion set in, leadings to overcrowding, high rents, social deviance and so on.

People them begin to move out to other areas on the city’s periphery in search of land and housing. As they moved, the carried with them various urban characteristics which affected the ways of life of those in the destination areas, the formerly rural communities.

In the case of Woji village, such developments started mainly in 1979, with the inception of the outside civilian administration when some affluent urbanites established residences to the areas. They bought plots of land at relatively low prices and set up their private buildings. Some are rented out to people of similar class position, they constituted a distinct class of people, separate from the indigenes, with a particular style of housing. This created a micro-urban enclave within a rural community, as in the case of Elijiji neighbourhood. Being a residential suburb, it was the construction of houses and the opening up of service jobs such as night watchmen and servants, that created employment for some of the indigenes. Thus the urban class structure took local shape.

Other state initiated developments like the new town programme, and the low-cost Housing scheme, helped to change the communal life style of Woji in to a class-based society of an urban espitalist type.

In sum, the private and public development and public developments in the rural areas have contributed to class formation and the articulation of the rural community with the urban capitalist setting.

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

The development of modern social classes in Nigeria; as in Africa as a whole, owes much to the extension and penetration of the capitalist mode of production into these areas. Capitalist penetration led to the development of towns and cities along the coast where traders first settled and carried out most of their commercial and administrative work, centred on the collection and transporting of locally produced goods and the sale of imported manufactures.

In the words of Gsvin Williams,

The colonial city developed .... as a centre of

commerce and administration, rather than industrial

production. It originated as a means whereby the

metropolitan rulers established a base for the

administration of the countryside, and the exploitation

of its resources, and consequently the transfer of the

surplus extracted from the country side to the metropolis.²

such was the development of earlier coastal cities which led to population concentration in such areas as people moved from the rural interior to these new environments in search of employment or commercial opportunities.

Thus , European capitalism was extended to Africa as a deformed mode where the development of towns and cities are accompanied with mass rural-urban migration of people leading to many socio-economic emanating in the urban centres. Some of these are over crowding, unemployment, epidemics, pollution, slums and crime.³ Here we have the first major population movement in urban development, is more or less a mass movement of the young people from the villages, especially school leavers and other able bodied men and women, to the towns,

In cities are therefore found different categories of people, the literate, semi-literate, skilled and unskilled. All in search of job created by the new economic system.

With differences in skills, level of education, job type and income, coupled with the heterogeneity of the population, the urban community approximates a ‘class’ stratified society of a capitalist type.

Under these conditions, given the earlier mentioned problems of overcrowding, slums, and so on some urbanites usually the affluent tend to move away from the centre to new settlements, mostly at outskirts of the cities.

Such movement represents the second important population shift in urban development, which is outward from the city centre. As people move, they tend to transfer some urban characteristics as well, such as the setting up modern block buildings, and participation in urban labour markets. The periphery, which was previously unsettled or consisting of indigenous villages. Then becomes, the scene of ‘suburban’ settlements. This study is aimed at finding the linkage between the movement of people from the city centre to the villages on the periphery, on the one hand, and the transfer or development of modern social classes approximating those of the city, on the other. This is treated in detail in the subsequent chapters.

In general, the study is divided into five sections, the first chapter deals with the introductory aspect of the whole study. It starts with a brief history of Port Harcourt city with emphasis on population growth and the socio-economic stratification manifested in the pattern of settlement in the city. This is followed by the aim, scope and problem of study; the methodology and lastly the limitations of the research.

Chapter two examines the theoretical from work, centred around mode of production approach which sees the development of classes in the rural areas as a product of the articulation of the urban capit6alist system and the pre-capitalist social formation represented by the rural settlements. In this chapter as well, the concept of class or class formation which runs through the whole length of the study is clearly examined, making use of the two outstanding schools of thoughts form the bases of our class analysis.

In Africa, land is very essential and more in the rural communities where all that is meant for survival is obtained from the land. The issue of land and its subsequent speculation is the case of Woji ‘Town’ are clearly examined in the third chapter. Other developments such as the ‘New Town’ programme in Woji and that of Federal low-cost housing scheme plus those of private individuals are highlighted in this chapter as well.

The further chapter examines the development of an affluent suburt in the city periphery as shown in the case of Elijiji neighbourhood in Rumuorolu village, a composite of Woji ‘town’.

Furthermore, among the original in-habitants of Woji, emerged, as a result of these developments certain special social categories of people who can be distinguished from the rest on the basis of their life styles, status, power and property.

These and other consequences of capitalist penetration and suburbanization are examined in the concluding chapters of this study.

On the whole the study is not looking at the development of Woji in terms of population growth but mainly in terms of specific socio-economic attributions peculiar or a capitalist society.

Finally, the project focuses on the activities of private individual s, and those of the state as instruments of urban development, in general and of the emergence of modern social classes of the capitalist type in particular, with reference to Woji village.

1.1 PORT HARCOURTGROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT

The city of Port Harcourt was deliberate , a purposeful creation. It is not one of the early coastal settlements but rather, a product of te latrephase of phase of colonial development. It was created by the british colonial development. It was created by the British colonial government in 1992, by which time the colonial presence was firmly established.⁴

The city of Port Harcourt has remained an important centre right from the colonial period to the present day. This has been possible because of its position as a port and as a terminus for eastern railway ling which conveys goods such as palm products, groundnuts, and coal from the interior down to the coast.⁵ This transport function paved the way for other commercial activities, as people from all walks of life began to move to the city to be engage in one business or another provided by the new promising capitalist economy of town.

According to Ogionwo:

The effect of the creation of the new Port was

to attract government installations, foreign business

enterprises, as well as workers and business men

from many parts of Nigeria and west Africa... several

European trading firms formerly operating at delts

Ports moved to Port Harcourt.... commercial activities

Throughout the Rivers areas began to be drawn towards

Port Harcourt .

This movement of people from all over the world, coupled with the rural-urban migration from the surrounding villages, was further stimulated by the booming oil industry and the creation of states in 1967 which made the city a state headquarters.⁷

Thus , the influx of migrants, both those that have received western education and those who had not, meant a change in both the demography and pattern of settlement in the city.

The population of Port Harcourt, according to the 1952-53 population census of Nigeria, stood at 79, 63⁴ .

This rose to 179, 563 by 1963, an increase of more than a hundred percent, representing in annual growth rate of 8.7 percent on the average. Between 1963 and 1972, the population of Port Harcourt is said to have risen up to 213, 443 despite the effect of the civil war which is estimated to have brought down the population to 143,000 in 1970⁸.

Table 1

POPULATION OF POST HARCOURT, 1953-1973

YEARS	TOTAL POPULATION	PERCENT CHANGE
1953	76,634	1953-1963 25.5
1963	177,563	1965-1973 29.0
1970	213,443	1963-1970 18.0
1973	231,632	1970-1973 8.5

SOURCE: Oginwo, W., 1979 P. 50.

The population of Port Harcourt then has been on the increase right from colonial times to the present. It is biased towards the younger age groups. For instance, the median age in Port Harcourt in 1973 was 30.4 year⁹.

Recently in the 1982. The population of the city was put at 911.731.¹⁰ The consensus is that the city is almost approaching one million in term of population. Initially the city was made up of three main zones, the European reservation, now Government Reservation Area (G.R.A.); The main Town; and lastly, Diobu, comprising Miles I, II & III, with the least having the highest population concentration (see table 2) and (Map one).

Describing the pattern of settlement in relation to the ecological nature of city, wolpe said;

Because of its location on the edge of the Niger

Deltas mangrove foreshore, much of Port Harcourt

is uninhabitable, consisting in the main of winding

creeks and muddy swamp land... the city’s population

was spread among a number of dry land residential

layouts, ranging from the plush, low density

Europeanised section that accommodated the city’s

Expatriates and Nigerian upper class (senior civil servants, a

few professionals and wealthy businessmen), to the urban

population was concentrated within the median-to high-

density section know as the ‘main township’ and ‘Mile 2 Diobu’¹¹

This pattern has not change much, for most of the recent settlement sand expansion have been towards the ‘main land’ where scarcity of land is not so acute. At the same time, the physical expansion of the city has led to the incorporation of many surrounding villages. An analysis of the socio-economic profile of the entire region portioned the city (and the incorporated villages) into fourteen neighbourhood units.¹² This is shown in the 1973 Master Plan for Port Harcourt city as indicated in table 2 below.

As it is said that water choose its own level, so it is with the urban population. Those with medium or high education, income and perhaps occupation, found in places like the Government Residential Area I &II. Amadi layout and Trans Amadi complex. Here the population density in terms of neighbourhoods are also lower than the rest, these areas also have the lowest dwelling units per acre of 1.2, 1.5, 2.4 and 3.0 respectively (see table 2).

Those with little or no education and low income are found in Amadi-Ogbunabali, Borokiri, Main Town/Coronation layout Diobu Mile 1,11, 111. Rainbow Town complex and St John T.T.C. Complex.

In terms of ‘Tenure Status, about 90 percent of Port Harcourt residents rent their houses. The lowest percentages of the renters are located in Amadi –Ogbunabali and St John T.T.C. Complex with 32.3 and 21.4 percent of owner occupied houses respectively. Rainbow Town Complex is the only extreme case. Unlike other neighbourhoods, it is one hundred percent renter-occupied, and also has the highest percentage of deficient Housing units.¹³

Cities generally are products of stratified social systems. They are non-agrarian communities, comprised mainly of government officials, other service workers and a host of self-employed traders and petty commodity producers. Under capitalism, wage workers and the white-collar salariat assume special importance. Thus is Port Harcourt we find various categories of people such as manager. Bureaucrats, industrial workers, merchant of all categories, big businessmen, petty commodity producers and many half- employed and unemployed migrants, brought together under one capitalist economic system.

In Port Harcourt, for example, the high cost of renting houses has made many people to move away from the city to the periphery where such cost are relatively low. In the city centre for instance, the cost of renting a room is between thirty and forty naira bill and water rates. Furthermore, to secure a room, it is found that one has to ppay in advance, up to ten or twelve month cost of rent age, a very short time. The cost of rentage depends on the location of building and the quality of the house. By quality we mean, the availability of good sewage disposal system. Bathroom facilities kitchen facilities and other attributes of standard housing types.¹⁴ Another factor that contributes to the increase in the cost of rentage is that of competition between them would be occupants. Each tries to buy the favour of the landlord by offering to pay higher rents.

In the face of these competitions, coupled with other urban problem like overcrowding pollution, slums and other vices of the crime. People tend to move away to areas out side the city where the cost of renting houses and other problems are limited. For example, while the cost of renting a room in Port Harcourt city ranges between thirty and Forty Naira per month, those of the peripheral villages like Rumuigbo, Rumuokwuta, Rumuogba and Woji of the same time of building is between twenty-five and thirty naira per mount. The conditions makes people to move to such areas.

In the course of the process of movement, some elements of the urban (modern) social class structure of the capitalist type infiltrated into the villages on the periphery which are the destination areas of such movement.

Such areas may not fail within the city boundary (like the above) but are linked by good roads and other elements of communication with the city. For example, the construction of Port Harcourt. Aba express way, East-West road (Part of Trans-African highway) and that of Port Harcourt Owerri which leads to the International Air Port in the state has led to the development of settlements along such roads.

This is noted by Macord and McCord:

... subsequent desporsal of people into areas outside

of the central city may be explained by such factors

as the widespread use of the automobile and the

paving of high ways, improved public transportation

transmittal of electric power over great distance,

and improvement in means of communication ...

as well as the presumed values associated with

suburban existence.¹⁵

This kind of movement to the periphery, particularly of the more affluent urbanites like professionals, bureaucrats and partners in business companies, tends to transfer such things as wage labour, modern buildings with high rents, land speculation and other elements of capitalism into the peripheral villages of the city.

These tendencies are reinforced by Government activities in the periphery such as the establishment of educational institutions in the villages. For instance, the establishment of a university in choba village has led to the emergence of capitalist class formation in this area. Other government activities are upgrading of villages into urban status creation of new local Government Areas. Introduction of low-cost housing schemes and other public establishments. These institution also lead to the development of modern capitalist social classes in the urban periphery.

This class formation can also be seen in terms of the process of articulation of the capitalist mode and pre-capitalist modes of production.

The class structure that result from this process and the development of suburban settlements are clearly analysed in the subsequent chapters.

1.2 SCOPE AND PROBLEM

The emergence of the capitalist mode of production which uses wage labour to produce for profit, prompted the development of the modern class structure which has now become virtually universal.

It led to the expanded development of cities which increased not only is number but in physical size or territory. Gradually incorporating areas of their er stwhile peripheries.

This study is aimed at examining the development of modern social classes in the peripheral settlements of cities in so for as this is a consequence of ‘urban-rural’ migration involving the more well-to-do urbanites.

Like other cities, the development of good communication networks in Port Harcourt and the extension of other social amenities such as piped water and electricity to the adjacent villages in the periphery, has contributed in no small measure to the re-arrangement of the urban population. It has led to the transfer or extension of urban population. It has led to the transfer or extension of urban class structure to the nearby settlements in the periphery as people move from the city to settle in these areas.

For the purpose of this study, we still use Woji village or town as our base of analysis, an area that has increasingly developed urban characteristics as people now there from the city centre.

Geographically, Woji village for Town (or Town as it is often called by the inhabitants) falls within the administrative division of Obio, but since the advent of the outsed civilian administration (1979-1983), it become the headquarters of woji District with its temporary head office at Rumuogba, the original headquarters. (see Map two).

The study therefore is concerned with the emergence of capitalist class formation in woji as a consequence of the infiltration of city migrants who care to settle in this area.

We have also examined some of the activities of both state and federal governments, such as the New Town programme of the ousted civilian administration of Rivers state, and the Federal Low-Cost housing scheme of Shagari’s Government, all have played a part in the socio-economic development of ‘Woji Town’. We will concentrate our analysis within the period 1979-1983, a time when the development of urban classes became more pronounced in woji and, indeed in Nigeria in general.

On the whole we shall examine the relationship between the migrants and the members of the community, how both have contributed to the emergence of modern social classes in Woji, we will also look at the class of people connected with this transfer and developments in terms of the following:

a) The reasons behind their moving away from the centre to the periphery.

b) How they have been able to secure land as private property in the face of the village (communal) ownership of land .

c) The type of houses they build, their pattern of settlement and

d) Finally, their socio-economic and political influence of the village community, particularly as regards the development of capitalist society.

1.3 METHODOLOGY

In carrying out a study of this nature, various methods are usually adopted for the collection of data, as questionnaires, observation, and interviews.

Having (Haven) staged in Woji village for several months and from other frequent visits, and contacts with migrants and villagers alike, I decided to use interviews and observation in collecting data. Another reason is that the population is heterogeneous, only a few are literate, and hence, the use of interview and observation seemed to be more reliable.

Even among the educated, as in the migrant neighbourhood of Elijiji, we found a preference for oral interviews as opposed to answering written questions, which they felt was time consuming. On my part, this method also proved very informative. In the sense that some historical facts which could have been hard to get through questionnaire methods, were provided by the respondents during conversations.

Furthermore, it was through observation, by surveying the entire area. In most cases when on a walk with friends that enable me to sketch out map of woji village. In addition, my knowledge of Woji village and the issue of land ownership and speculation was got from a story once told by a friend, who is an indigene of this place. According to this story, the issue of land speculation in Woji started mainly in 1979 when people from outside the village came to look for land for residential purpose. This led many of the villagers to scramble for land which they eventually sold out to migrants.

However, it is the revelation from this story and other personal observations that initially let me to under take a study of this nature.

Reside this, inorder to obtain information that will generally represent the entire population, I decided to interview general categories of people : land lords, who sold out land to the migrants, those who bought land (on which they are residing ). Labours who bought land (on which they are residing), labourers who took part in the construction of such modern buildings, Night guards, market women and other villagers. Thus the use of formal interviews with fixed list of questions and more of completely open-ended ones were employed in the collection of data.

Lastly, published materials were also consulted. Both secondary sources and daily news peppers being used to obtain data. On the whole, the issues of classes and class formulating in Africa. And the effects of capitalist penetration are not neglected or obscure issues. Infact, agood deal has been written in those developments.

Such relevant literature as could be obtained locally was consulted as fully as possible, as indicated in the Bibliography.

To sum up, in carrying out a study of this nature, several problems are usually encountered, which this particular project is no exception. This brings us to the draw hacks or imitations of the research.

1.4 LIMITATIONS

The first limiting factor was the ‘on’ and ‘off’ in the school Calender for the session due to certain problems which led to closure of the university. Being a non indigene of the state, it posed a problem to me as some of the several call back during data collection, could not be repeated on schedule.

Another issue is that of folotics, which also affected the general collection of data. Some of the respondents like the district secretary when contacted for information on the ‘new town programme in Woji. Could not give me a complete audience. He was however busy with the registration of considerate vying, for elective post in the 1983 general election.

Things would have worked well after the general election, but for the coming of the military the situation however changed.

Thus, the current probe instituted by the military government to investigate the affairs of the district council members has affected my race in data collection; As most of the respondents have been sent on compulsory leave, by the pennel.

However, most of the informations on the ‘new town’ programme were got from News papers and through ratio broadeasts.

The financing of the research also constituted a problem due to the curreney exchange exercise and the present situation in the Banks (June, 1984). This were however overcome through the help of help of friends and that of my supervisor.

On the whole, the problems were however socorpolished after ratting with some of them. The end result is the production of this thesis.

FOOT NOTES ON CHAPTER ONE

1. See Joseph Gugler & Willam G. Flanagan, Urbanization and Social Change in West Africa (London: Cambridge University press, (1978),

P. 27.

2. Ibid, P. 26

3. See Akin L. Mabogunye, Urbanization in Nigeria( New York; Africana Publishing Corporation 1971: P.319

4. Gugler & Flanagen Op, city; P.27.

5. Howard Wolpe, Urban politics in Ngeria; A study of port Harcourt, University of Califonia press, 1974),P.22

6. William Ogionwo, A Social Survey of Port Harcourt, (Ibadan: Heinemann Educational Books (Nig) Limited, 1979), P. 3.

7. Ibid, p.49

8. Ibid p.50

9. Salu, (in press) Nigerian cities: the Evolution an Dynamics of an Urban System Cited in C.Y. Izeogu, A.T. Salau & W.D.C. Wokoma, “ The Case Study of Port Harcourt” Presented at the National Conference on the Urban Poor in Nigeria, (University of Benin, 17-19^th April 1984) P.7

10. Wolpe , Op City., P.15

11. Izeogu, Salau & Wokoma, Op cit, P.7

12. Ibid, P. 10

13. Ogionwo W. Op Cit, P.137-8.

14. Arline McCord & William McCord, Urban Social Conflict (Saint Louis:, Mosby, 1977), P.30

15. Ibid P.18

16. Eskor Toyo, “Identification and Definition of Class”,

Pan-Afrcan Journalof Social Research, 1,1,(Nov.1978), P. 12.

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