Conclusion

Summary

That the Saro were leading pioneers in various fields of endeavour in early Port Harcourt society could not be denied. In education, the church, the press, and African political representation, among others, their dominance was unrivalled. The community's initial freedom from local ethnic ties, which correspondingly increased its ethnic vulnerability while freeing its leaders from a host of communal pressures and obligations, and its superior educational preparation, greatly enhanced its appeal in local colonial society. Saro leaders thus came easily into official appointments, and into jobs with local mercantile firms and other employers in the public and private sectors of the colonial economy. This conclusion must, among other things, situate the expectations of those who invested confidence in these immigrants alongside Saro performance in the principal arena of opportunity, viz., public service. Port Harcourt Saro activity on the Niger needs also to be juxtaposed alongside other Saro exertions in the much better known Yorubaland context. The survival strategies of an immigrant community under siege also deserve some concluding comment.

The colonial government was Port Harcourt's largest employer, and it was arguably in the public realm that the Saro would have the most prominence, and be challenged to their more notable contributions. Through their dominance of the debate in both the Township Advisory Board and the African Community League, Saro opinion would progressively coalesce around the muchadvertised views of their most prominent spokesman, the Rev. L. R. Potts-Johnson. Entrepreneur, politician, humourist, rebel churchman, and tribune and advocate of the people on a multitude of causes, Potts-Johnson was obviously on many occasions a disappointment to British officials who found their confidence in him generally unrecompensed. This study has chronicled in some detail his unrelenting critique of official policy, and we have also noted his ability to reach beyond the immediate concerns of his class to Port Harcourt's less advantaged majority, a quality that was conspicuous by its absence among Port Harcourt's patricians. Though a prime beneficiary of official preferment, and, for many years, an insider on policy discussion, Potts-Johnson maintained a discrete distance from the colonial administration, to project, at least for a time, a semblance of objectivity in his appraisal of the government's conduct. He railed incessantly at administrative foibles (a stance that could have done no violence to sales of his newspaper), and exposed official shortcomings with an unsparing regularity.