Living in Lekki and the fallacy of premium

Lekki gets a lot of rap from mainlanders. Poor people like it when rich people cry. It is sour grapes. They blend it with ice and simple syrup to make a cold glass of schadenfreude. Delighting in your enemy’s travails is sweet.

Little minds.

I moved to Lekki in late 2023 and wrote a viral blog post about the transition. The reception to the post took me by surprise. All I did was contrast my life on the mainland with my new life on the island. People laughed their socks off. Shame on you lot for treating my pain with levity! To date, the post has been the most viewed on the blog.

The comments on the post revealed the disdain for the island among mainland folks. But we can all agree that Lekki people are the architects of their mockery. They think their fart smells like Chanel No 5 and there are more BBLs on this island to shame Brazilians.

A few folks felt my commentary at the time was premature, given that I had only lived in Lekki for three months. They asked me to wait at least a year to do a fair evaluation.

It was a fair ask. A lot can happen in a year. So, I promised to write a sequel after one year. I have now lived in Lekki for 17 months. Which is better, the mainland or the island?

It is a difficult question to answer. There can be no objective answer; only individual biases. Let me share mine.

Lekki is very underrated.

For example, no house on the mainland has coffee flowing straight from the tap.

In Lekki, when you open any tap in your house, brown brew flows. You only need to add cream or sugar.

On the mainland, taps only yield potable water.

We have Burna Boy, you have Portable.

And nowhere else in Nigeria can you get up close to big celebrities as in Lekki.

I’ll give you an instance.

The first and only time I saw Beyoncé in person was in 2010 at Times Square. The missus and I had stopped to watch some buskers doing a Michael Jackson routine. A small crowd had gathered. This is Times Square, home of cheesy attractions.

Then, out of nowhere, Queen Bey showed up, flanked by three bodyguards. She stopped to watch the buskers too. I was no more than six metres from her. It was surreal.

I brought out my point-and-shoot and started filming her. Phone cameras were rudimentary in those days. I had the iPhone 3GS, a 3-megapixel phone. No selfie camera. Only 8GB of storage. Now, phones have 50-megapixel cameras and shoot video in 4K @120fps. The 12-megapixel point-and-shoot was therefore a no-brainer.

One of the hawk-eyed bodyguards spotted me filming and signalled to one of his mates. The second bodyguard looked in my direction, saw me filming Beyonce, and headed for me. He was thickset and bald. I could see his strapping biceps through his overcoat.

Myself, I was no slouch either. I could take the guy with a jab-cross-hook-low kick combination. But I was with the wife. I didn’t want drama. The last time I was in a fight, body parts were lost. I lost two teeth and an ear.

I stopped filming.

Anyway, the point of the story is that I had to travel 8,600 kilometres to New York to see a proper celebrity.

Here in Lekki, we are celebrity-jaded. They are a dime a dozen. We walk past Jay Jay without saying hi.

The first time I saw Jason Momoa was at Ikate, on Kusenla Road. It had rained.

A pod of killer whales was after a seal. The orcas cornered the seal on an iceberg at the end of the street. As they gave thanks and brought out their napkins, guess who showed up to rescue the poor seal? Jason Momoa! Aquaman, with his Trident of Neptune!

Yeah, that’s how we roll in Lekki – Atlantis.

Flooding

By the way, never buy or rent a house on Kusenla Road during the dry season. In fact, never buy or rent a house in Lekki during the dry season. Go house hunting in the rainy season. That way, you’ll know if the area is for Captain Jack Sparrow or a landlubber. There are many nice-looking neighbourhoods in Lekki during the dry season. But once the rains start, well, Jason Momoa.

I am not raining on the parade of developers in Lekki. But it is my duty as your friend to let you know that you are about to stop paying for fish if you move into that house. Seeing you sitting on your balcony with a fishing rod will break my heart. But you might like fish more than you like land. In which case, feel free to do you. I’ll bring the chips and ketchup.

Now that the rains are here, there will be angst and gnashing of teeth. I am one of the lucky ones. My area does not flood. I went house hunting during the rainy season. But we still have some water. Nothing big. Only one mammy water can swim in it at a time.

I only encounter significant bodies of water if the traffic is insufferable and I take shortcuts. That is why there are many SUVs in Lekki. The vehicles are not a sign of affluence. They are a practical means of getting around if you don’t want to do the breaststroke. I don’t know what you know about Lekki people, but most can’t swim.

Still on vehicles, there must be a hidden Mercedes-Benz assembly plant in Lekki. There are more Mercedes here than in Germany. I look around and see that I am the only one who does not have a Benz. I am doing something wrong.

Traffic

One of the attractions for moving to the island was the promise of less traffic.

It was fool’s gold.

The traffic in Lekki can be horrendous. One morning, I left home as a 30-year-old. When I came back in the evening, I had four grandchildren. I’d spent years in traffic.

And don’t get me started on Detty December. It is more like Bedlam December. My plan is not to be here in December.

There are way too many people and way too many vehicles in Lekki. The place is becoming a posh Alimosho. Residents who have lived here since 2010 lament about the people and traffic. Unbeknownst to them, Lekki is where the “Nigerian Dream” lives.

The junctions on the Lekki-Epe Expressway can be absolute murders. LASTMA and LNSC officers shout themselves hoarse trying to untangle the mess. It’s an impossible job. When the officers go home, common sense goes home too. Agberos and urchins step in as traffic officers.

But the government knows what to do. Junctions, or ‘oríta,’ are important amongst Yoruba animist beliefs. It is where you offer the appeasement sacrifice or ‘ebó’ against your bedevilment.

But this is Lekki. We’ve been feeding the devils presiding over the junctions the wrong ebó. We’ve been giving them Sautéed Calamari and Nasi Goreng when they want ekuru and yam with palm oil. I have even spotted bottles of Glenfiddich and Don Julio at junctions. For sprites that love sungbalaja and sokudaye. And we wonder why the junctions are a mess. The etutu is too bougie.

But can anyone explain why there are no cameras on the Lekki-Epe Expressway? It is why everyone drives like a jackass on the road. On the mainland, there is a surfeit of cameras. You borrow yourself brain. But on the island, no cameras. Zilch, zip, zippo. Why is that?

Governor Sanwo-Olu, we have money to give to Lagos State here! Come and help us spend this schmoney!

Koropes

Now, to the koropes.

When I lived on the mainland, I thought koropes were the spiritual affliction of poor people. That by living on the mainland, we entered into a blood covenant with misery, manifested by koropes.

These chaps. They curse your father and mother if they are behind you and you stop to obey the traffic light. Half of the road is their park, and they stop in the middle of it to pick up passengers. If you rail at them, they curse your father and mother again. They’d drive one-way and disregard LASTMA and the police. They are a law unto themselves.

Thus, I expected to be rid of this thorn when I moved to the island. A premium elitist suburbia surely can’t have lawlessness hold sway.

Some delusion now and then does not hurt.

For on this elite and posh wetland, koropes abound. And they are as intractable and ineradicable as their mainland counterparts.

Delusional Real Estate Pricing

There is this bloke on Instagram who rails against overpriced houses on the island. He is my influencer of the year.

There is nothing fantastic about Lekki to justify the ridiculous price tags on many houses.

By what metric or valuation is a 5-bedroom house in Osapa N1.6bn? Or a 4-bedroom house on Orchid Road N300m? There are houses in Ajah that are quoted at N350m. I mean, Ajah is next to the Benin Republic! Ajah is where you go if you want to hide from a generational curse.

By the way, Orchid Road should be renamed Hemlock Road. Just saying.

Some developers may tell you that the real price of an item is how much a buyer is willing to pay for it, especially in a society like ours where loot abounds. So developers look to capitalise. Na who EFCC catch be thief.

But what also ticks me off is how houses that don’t pass muster are labelled as ‘luxury.

Let me tell you what luxury is and what it is not.

I like how Coco Chanel defined luxury.

“Luxury is a necessity that begins where necessity ends.”

Luxury is excellence. It is craftsmanship. It is exclusivity and exceptional taste.

Luxury is a Birkin. It is a Rolls-Royce or the Ritz-Carlton.

It is not a house with lights from Alaba or SweetHome washbasins, a ‘fully fitted kitchen’ or an ‘ultra-modern’ house amid shanties. Luxury is an exquisite three-bedroom villa on 70 acres of green. It is why people get on a six-year waitlist to own a Rolex Daytona. Please put some respect on the word!

Diasporan Influence

The target group for these overpriced properties also appears to be Nigerians in the diaspora. I am beginning to dislike that lot. They abet inflation in Nigeria. Everything is now ‘abroad price.’ Because of them, we can no longer eat snails.

Not long ago, 20 jumbo snails cost around N45K. But these economic migrants show up with pounds or dollars and the price jumps to N110K! They don’t haggle over price. 50 snails for $150 looks like a steal to them.

You people should keep your blood money to yourselves and let us be poor in peace!

The other day, the missus and I went to Oyingbo Market and priced locust beans. It was more expensive than expected. One seller explained that she had cleaned and prepared hers for travel.

“Shebi una wan take am go abroad?” she enquired.

I almost lied that I live in Makoko.

Even a tailor who sews agbada for N55K now wants N100K. All because some Yoruba demon from Dallas wants to drip.

If you wan drip, go General Hospital na!

My adorable sister-in-law, too, is not guiltless. She wants my wife to bring her two whole goats when she comes for Christmas.

Odindi ewure meji. Una wan host Sango ni?

Anyway, Lekki is its own vibe. The place grows on you. I enjoy the bars and restaurants. The nightlife enchants. After a while, the prices no longer seem high. Not if you always drive to The Lagos Country Club to eat N1,500-ofada. God bless The Lagos Country Club! Afam’s isi-ewu is still N4,000! The cheapest I’ve seen in Lekki is N16,000.

And Lekki is fun. There is no shortage of surprises. Yakoyo and Wagyu burger, masquerades and Cybertrucks, churches and Brazilian Butt-Lifts.

And oh, there are now tokunbo Cybertrucks in town.

That’s how we roll in Lekki.

Views expressed by contributors are strictly personal and not of TheCable.