The challenge posed by the activities of the African Progress Union (APU) had raised to a position of some prominence the question of African representation in the governing of Port Harcourt. Where the British administration preferred a process of nominated representation in accord with imperial policy of political minimalism, some vocal African leaders were insisting on the right to choose leaders through the franchise. In a petition to the Governor in March 1929, the APU had stated pointedly: “We loyal British subjects of his majesty … firmly lay hope on British justice and fairplay in that taxation goes with representation, and to consult the welfare of the people is the first great law …”

Not only was the principle of elective representation a matter of some debate by 1930, the desire to secure more aggressive leaders who would empathise with the aspirations of the African majority and articulate their many frustrations, was an issue of uncommon interest and general solicitude. There was a desire to identify spokesmen from within the lettered elite circles, who could be trusted to espouse the cause of the poor, even where this ran counter to elite advantage. Observers of the TAB's African nominees had recoiled in disappointment at their performance. Drawn from the indigenous as well as the immigrant (Saro) elite, they had proved themselves uniformly unequal to their charge, and their conduct had engendered the cynicism in which APU claims had flourished. There was a communal yearning for a more purposive and aggressive leadership, yet one that would be shorn of the still repulsive proletarianism that had dogged the APU's image. This climate of doubt and apprehension would ultimately provide room for the flowering of Potts-Johnson's genius. If the Sierra Leonean nominee to the Township Advisory Board (TAB), the rather aloof patrician, I. B. Johnson, could be accused of lacklustre identification with the essence of the APU, no such charge could be seriously levied against his compatriot, the Rev. L. R. Potts-Johnson.

Potts-Johnson needed little encouragement in turning the pages of the Nigerian Observer over the APU. In several editorials, he echoed the movement's economic and social concerns in the difficult days of the depression.