^{Page 469 note 1} Coleman, James S., Nigeria: background to nationalism (Los Angeles, 1958), p. 335.Google Scholar

^{Page 469 note 2} The terminology is Geertz's, Clifford. See his ‘The Integrative Revolution’, in Geertz, C. (ed.), Old Societies and New States (Glencoe, III., 1963), pp. 105–57.Google Scholar

^{Page 470 note 1} It is estimated that in 1963 less than 7 per cent of Port Harcourt'3 population was indigenous to the area.

^{Page 470 note 2} The unemployment figure is derived from data supplied by Dr Archibald Callaway.

^{Page 470 note 3} Sources: the 1921 Census, reported by Talbot, P. Amaury, Peoples of Southern Algeria (London, 1926), vol. IV, p. 22;Google ScholarPopulation Census of Eastern Region of Nigeria, 1953 (Lagos, 1953), pp. 42–7;Google Scholar 1963 Census Reports for Census Districts Nos. 309301 and 309302 (Lagos, mimeo); and Annual Report for Port Harcourt District, 1943 (National Archives File OW 5389/7; Riv Prof; 1/29/1101).

^{Page 470 note 4} Inasmuch as some of the larger industrial establishments lie outside the municipal boundaries, the Port Harcourt urban area is technically larger than the municipality. However, most of those employed even in the outlying industrial plants reside within the municipal boundaries.

^{Page 470 note 5} Mile a Diobu, deriving its name from its location two miles to the north of the main township, contains the city's slum. In 1963 over 80,000 were crowded into a space of less than one square mile, and newly arrived immigrants moved into Mile 2 and the surrounding area every day in search of cheap land and and accommodation. Mile 2 Diobu was administratively joined with the municipality in 1960

^{Page 471 note 1} In 1953, Ibos constituted 68–1 per cent of the regional population and 77–3 per cent of Port Harcourt's population. The controversial 1963 census reported a somewhat lower Ibo percentage at the regional level; in Port Harcourt no comparable figures are obtainable, but Ibos appeared to have slightly increased their proportion of the total urban population.

^{Page 473 note 1} Dike, K. Onwuka, Trade and Politics in the Niger Delta, 1830–1885 (London, 1959), pp.43–4.Google Scholar

^{Page 473 note 2} Following Coleman, op. cit. p. 423, a ‘nationality’ is defined as ‘the largest traditional African group above a tribe which can be distinguished from other groups by one or more objective criteria (normally language)’. Thus, the Ibos (taken as a whole to mean all Ibospeaking tribes), the Efiks, the Ibibios, and the Ijaws are all termed ‘nationalities’.

^{Page 473 note 3} Ottenberg, Simon, ‘Ibo Oracles and Intergroup Relations’, in Southwestern Journal of Anthropology (Albuquerque), XIV, 3, Autumn 1958, p. 296.Google Scholar

^{Page 474 note 1} See Evans-Pritchard, E. E., ‘The Nuer of the Southern Sudan’, in Fortes, M. and Evans-Pritchard, E. E. (eds.), African Political Systems (London, 1940), p. 13.Google Scholar

^{Page 474 note 2} Ibid. pp. 282 and 284.

^{Page 474 note 3} Coleman, James S., ‘The Politics of Sub-Saharan Africa’, in Almond, Gabriel A. and Coleman, J. S. (eds.), The Politics of the Developing Areas (Princeton, 1960), p. 256.Google Scholar

^{Page 475 note 1} Jones, G. I., ‘From Direct to Indirect Rule in Eastern Nigeria’; paper presented to the Institute of African Studies, University of Ife (mimeo, 1964). The term, ‘natural leaders’, is borrowed from Jones.Google Scholar

^{Page 476 note 1} Ottenberg, op. cit. pp. 299 and 304.

^{Page 476 note 2} Jones, G. I., Report of the Position, Status, and Influence of Chiefs and Natural Rulers in the Eastern Region of Nigeria (Enugu, 1956), p. V.Google Scholar

^{Page 476 note 3} Coleman, , Nigeria, p. 40.Google Scholar

^{Page 477 note 1} Colonial Office, Commission Appointed to Enquire into the Fears of Minorities and Means of Allaying Them (London, 1958), p. 36.Google Scholar

^{Page 478 note 1} Dahi, Robert A., Who Governs (New Haven, 1960).Google Scholar

^{Page 478 note 2} Ibid. p. 15.

^{Page 479 note 1} L. R. Potts-Johnson, a Sierra Leonean Methodist pastor and secondary school proprietor, founded The Nigerian Observer in 1930, the town's only newspaper until 1940, when an Ibo, Nnamdi Azikiwe, introduced the nationalist Eastern Nigerian Guardian to Port Harcourt.

^{Page 479 note 2} Despite the act that the Ibos constituted the largest single nationality group within the town and, after 1943, within the League as well, no Ibo ever held the critical post of the League presidency. Between the League's inauguration in 1935 and its end in 1951, the presidency was held by two Sierra Leoneans, one Yoruba, and one Ijaw. Non-Ibos were also disproportionately represented among other important official posts during most of the League's existence, though the position of secretary was often filled by prominent Ibo leaders.

^{Page 481 note 1} Some indication of the social differentiation of Ibo sub-communities is given by a cornparison of the executive bodies of Port Harcourt's Onitsha Divisional Union (Onitsha Province), and Orlu Divisional Union (Owerri Province). In 1964, for example, the Onitsha executive body was composed of a smaller proportion ofpersons who had received no schooling (9·8 per cent of the total of 41, as contrasted with 263 per cent of the 19 Orlu executive members) and a higher proportion who had studied beyond the primary school certificate (26·8 per cent as compared with 15·8 per cent). Occupationally, 366 per cent of the Onitshas occupied clerical posts, compared with 10·5 per cent of the Orlus; on the other hand, 73·7 per cent of the Orlu executive members were either businessmen or petty traders and contractors, as compared with 366 per cent of the Onitsha members. In short, while immigrants from Onitsha Province came to occupy the prestigious African posts within the local civil service and European mercantile firms, it was the relatively less educated Orlu and other Owerri Provincial Ibos who assumed the leadership of Port Harcourt's African commercial sector.

^{Page 481 note 2} This terminology is borrowed from Merton, Robert K., Social Theory and Social Structure (Glencoe, III., 1957), pp. 387–420.Google Scholar

^{Page 482 note 1} John Umolu was a trade unionist who came to public attention through his activities in the famous 1950 strike of the United Africa Company African Workers. He was elected to the Regional House of Assembly in 1953; upon his re-election he was appointed parliamentary secretary to the Premier. Umolu was subsequently to become the first Minister of Establishments in Mid-Western Nigeria.

^{Page 484 note 1} The concepts of ‘communalism’ and ‘communalisation’ in this article refer to the grouping of urban residents according to the ascriptive characteristics of community of origin and native dialect. The ubiquitous Ibo ‘improvement union’ exemplifies this mode of communal grouping. It is to be noted that the communal associations operative in the city did not always correspond to traditional groupings and that their goals were almost invariably secular and change-oriented. Moreover, membership and participation were normally voluntary.

^{Page 484 note 2} The other side of the ‘communal coin’ is that the absence of ethnically defined and segregated residential areas in Port Harcourt limited the extent to which residentially defined electoral wards developed meaningful political identities. A significant neighbourhood stimulus to community development was therefore lacking.

^{Page 486 note 1} This phenomenon of ‘shifting salience’ is not unlike that of the American citizen identifying himself as a Worcester resident while in Massachusetts, as a native of Massachusetts while visiting California, and as an American when travelling in Europe. Ibos, however, especially compared with the members of other Nigerian nationalities, seemed particularly adept at closing ranks and combining against outsiders.

^{Page 486 note 2} The concept of ‘geo-ethnicity’ has much the same meaning as that of ‘ethnicity’, as used by Wallerstein, Immanuel, ‘Ethnicity and National Integration in West Africa’, in Cahiers d'études africaines (Paris), VII, 3, 10 1960, pp. 129–39.Google Scholar The former term is preferred here for two reasons. First it, offers a sharper conceptual tool than does ‘ethnicity’ to describe the new kinds of urban groupings which are based upon non-traditional or neo-traditional communities of origin. The differences between Orlu Division and Okigwi Division (two Ibo-speaking administrative units around which socio-political groupings in Port Harcourt have formed), or example, are no more ‘ethnic’ in character than are the differences between Kansas and Nebraska. The new administrative units are differentiated primarily by the arbitrary placement of colonial boundaries and only secondarily by cultural variations. Second, the use of the ‘geo-ethnicity’ concept to describe urban groupings based upon new, artificial entities enables us to reserve the concept of ‘ethnicity’ for urban groupings based more strictly on kinship, cultural, and linguistic ties.

^{Page 488 note 1} This historical point acquires added significance in the light of recent events. For the new state boundaries of Federal Nigeria, created in 1967, separate both Ahoada and Port Harcourt divisions from the Ibo-speaking East Central State. The recent discovery of petroleum and natural gas resources in the Ikwerre area—reportedly between one-third and one-half of Eastern Nigeria's oil resources are centred in the Ikwerre Ibo hinterland—very likely guided the federal map-makers.

^{Page 490 note 1} With respect to the fusion between ethnic structures, on the one hand, and those of party and government, on the other, it is interesting to note that in 1964 virtually all the members of the N.C.N.C.-controlled municipal council and (though this point was not investigated directly) probably a like number of N.C.N.C. executive members held high offices within their respective improvement unions. In many instances, the highest-ranking politicians were also the highest-ranking union officers.

^{Page 491 note 1} Dahl, op. cit. p. 54.

^{Page 491 note 2} The theoretical perspective outlined here parallels the ‘situational analysis’ approach taken by Gluckman, M., Mitchell, J. C., Epstein, A. L., and, more recently, by Plotnicov, Leonard, Strangers to the City: urban man in Jos, Nigeria (Pittsburgh, 1967).Google Scholar

^{Page 492 note 1} This argument is elaborated in the broader context of Nigerian development in a forthcoming volume edited by Melson, Robert and Wolpe, Howard, Nigeria: modernization and the politics of communalism, to be published by Michigan State University Press.Google Scholar

^{Page 492 note 2} For similar critiques, see Whitaker, C. S. Jr, ‘A Dysrhythmic Process of Political Change’, in World Politics (Princeton), xix, 2, 01 1967, pp. 190–217;Google Scholar and Lloyd, and Rudolph, Susanne, The Modernity of Tradition (Chicago, 1967).Google Scholar

^{Page 492 note 3} The failure of dichotomous models to correspond to empirical reality has led recently to the introduction of a number of caveats qualifying the asserted polarities. But, as Whitaker cogently observes (op. cit. p. 190), these caveats do not avoid the central theoretical dilemma: ‘To claim that qualities associated with the terms “traditional” and “modern” do not diverge significantly would be to nullify the supposed significance of the terms, namely, that they identify distinguishable classes of societies.’

^{Page 493 note 1} See Almond, Gabriel A., ‘Introduction: a functional approach to comparative politics’, in Almond, G. A. and Coleman, James S. (eds.), The Politics of the Developing Areas (Princeton, 1960), p. 22.Google Scholar