Port Harcourt

Port Harcourt (Pidgin: Po-ta-kot or Pi-ta-kwa) is the capital and largest city of Rivers State in Nigeria.[14] It is the fifth most populous city in Nigeria after Lagos, Kano, Ibadan and Benin.[15][16] It lies along the Bonny River and is located in the oil rich Niger Delta. As of 2023, Port Harcourt's urban population is estimated at 3,480,000.[17] The population of the metropolitan area of Port Harcourt is almost twice its urban area population with a 2015 United Nations estimate of 2,344,000.[7] 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.[18] The area that became Port Harcourt in 1912 was before that of a farmland of people of Rebisi (Ikwerre). The colonial administration of Nigeria created the port to export coal from the collieries of Enugu located 243 kilometres (151 mi) north of Port Harcourt,[19] to which it was linked by a railway called the Eastern Line, also built by the British.[2][19][20]