Garden City or Garbage City: The Case of Port Harcourt Metropolis, Rivers State, Nigeria

Port Harcourt acquired the name “Garden City” for its neatness, beauty, organisation of the buildings and well constructed road networks across the entire city; but this once beautiful city has been overtaken by garbage. Hence, the objectives of this study were to find out why the solid waste management strategies employed by the Rivers State Waste Management Agency and their contractors are not working and provide best solutions in curbing the challenges militating against solid waste management of the city. Purposive sampling technique was used to determine the sample. Because of the time constraint and the wide area of coverage for this study; 10 areas consisting of 10 communities were selected based on their size, popularity and centrality. Oral interviews and field observation were the methods of data collection and the data obtained through oral interviews were analysed through simple coding, groupings, re-writing, transcribing and interpretations. The results revealed that the solid wastes generated are uncontrolled due to overcrowded settlements; an uncultured way of living of the residents; lack of the needed man-power and technology on the part of the solid waste contractors. It was also revealed that the Government do not carry out proper monitoring and uses unskilled and unqualified persons to carry out their jobs. It was concluded that to adequately clean up the city of Port Harcourt, the Government should stand up to their responsibility of keeping the city clean and sensitize the people on the need to package and dispose of their waste properly.