I am fortunate to stay with a friend in a gated estate with large numbers of security, amidst the surrounding area where residents ensure their own order and amenities (in place of the faulty public services).
Estate Positioning
Having been around several locations in Lekki, my estate’s positioning is quite typical. It is about a kilometre from the motorway ‘entrance into territory’ looked after by Omo Onile (see separate adjacent blog post)
When one turns from the motorway there is around a kilometer long stretch of public roads with poor infrastructure and heavy protection around plots/compounds. Eventually one comes to the estate gate
Gate & Surrounding economies
There is diverse economic activity along the public roads: food supplies, car and generator repair, ‘taxi’ motorbikes. The amount of activity is amplified at the two ends, the motorway and the estate gate (especially during the peak hours (see below).
Gate Activity
Peak hours are between 6 and 9 am and 4 -6 pm. In the morning there is a busy traffic of residents leaving the premises and builders, maids and other workers entering the gates – their IDs are checked against the list given by the estate owner or sometimes the residents are phoned. All entering visitors sign in a book.
Security company
The company is employed by estate management team and has presence in a 1000 other locations. If an entering vehicle has an estate tag, the guards only check the people’s faces inside. If there is no tag, the connection to a particular residence is verifies (sometimes this takes some time), as well as the faces and the contents of the boot.
When I was ‘on duty’ between 8 and 10 am there were between 6 and 8 security personnel, at least 2 at each of the paired gates, 2 at the watch tower and a policeman employed by the estate’s management to invidelate the security team correctness.
no.balsa 