5 - The Gathering Clouds: Independence, the Civil War, and Its Aftermath, 1950-75

Summary

With the death of Potts-Johnson, his Saro heirs in Port Harcourt lost their prominence on the political stage, and their lives came to be increasingly dominated by issues of group survival as Nigeria moved toward political independence, with a growing xenophobia directed at resident strangers in some quarters. In scenes reminiscent of Herbert Macaulay's retreat before Youth Movement forces in Yorubaland, and foreshadowing the much later Krio capitulation before overwhelming indigenous forces in the Sierra Leone of 1961, the Port Harcourt Saro bowed to the compelling logic of their demographic incapacity as they left the centre stage of local political activism, resorting only periodically to such political overtures as seemed likely to protect the community's interests. As the territory approached political independence in 1960, no local Saro resident would feature prominently in the partypolitical stakes that were played out in the township. The stage was mostly dominated by the Igbo, and their Ijaw associates. The most immediate challenge that the Saro now faced was one of nationality. The first generation of Saro residents was dying out, and at a relatively young age, and their progeny, the majority of whom had never been to Sierra Leone, would now have to carve a niche for themselves within the coming independent state, if they were not to return to the Sierra Leone from whence their parents had come. Those without local marriage ties would generally seek to hold on to a wholly Krio lifestyle and value system. The minority who had conjugal links in local society, attempted to retain twin cultural ties to both the Krio social formation, and the indigenous ethnic community of their affiliation. Nigerian and other nonSierra Leonean spouses of the Saro would also be very active in the group's socioeconomic orbit after 1950, and, as mediators often between the immigrant and the indigenous communities, they would play significant social roles particularly in periods of tension. A few would seek to pursue their incorporation to its logical conclusion, by volunteering for Sierra Leonean citizenship. Other Sierra Leoneans who were not of Krio stock, but had always functioned within the essentially Krio matrix of the Saro community, would continue to be a part of the social melange of the post-1950's.