“I just manage this job because I have to pay for my education,’ he said. “N26,000 is not enough to cover for the type of risk I face daily. There was a time when armed robbers came here, and they hit me with a gun when I told them I did not know where the money was.”

Many security guards face similar risks ― but they earn even less.

Bassey Udor is one of them. He’s a guard at a hotel in Festac, Lagos, and earns only N10,000 a month. ”Normally my job is to open the gate for cars to come in and go out, but I want to leave this work soon: the pay is too small and the risk is too much because robbers usually target big hotels like our own,” he said.

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