Betting: Why It Is Not As Bad As It Seems -By Segun Ogunlade

As soon as his alarm started blaring at seven in the morning, 30-year-old Olu got off his bed. He knelt beside his bed and said a little word of prayers. At half-past nine, he headed out of the house and walked across the street. His destination was the betting house adjacent his street. That has been his office for over a year after he was fired from his previous job. The money he made from betting was what sustained throughout the month. For him, that is better than labouring tirelessly under the sun as a marketer for one of the marketing companies in Lagos.

Uche, a 24-year-old young man, is a graduate of Geology from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. He had applied for many jobs without success. His original plan was to work for a year and a half after which he would start his own importation business. After eight months of active job hunting and no success, he resorted to betting with any money that comes his way because he was told he could win big. He tried betting and somehow, it seemed to work for him. After each round of winning, he saves a part of it whilst hoping that he would win big one day. That day will be the day he will quit patronising the betting shop and then start his own business. Uche has been playing for six months now and he hasn’t won big yet. Thus, he hasn’t stopped betting every day praying for the big day when he would cash out and never return.

As for Hassan, he is a mid-level sales executive in central Lagos. He sees his salary as too small and there is a need to augment it. As a result, he was introduced to betting by his friends. He always books betting tickets from his office before the start of the day’s work. Anytime he wins, he goes home to his lovely wife a happy man. So, he books betting tickets three times a week. His winning and losing streak has never been regular. When luck decides to favour him, he could win twice or thrice a week. On some other days, luck ran out on him. Like Uche, he hopes to win big one day, quit his job and start a farming business in his village in Gombe state.

You might have heard stories that bore resemblance to any of these three. From these stories, you could see that people bet for different reasons. While it is sometimes true that some unemployed youths take solace in betting as a means of keeping their minds off of their joblessness status, that is not often the case. Like Olu in the story above, some people choose to play bet professionally. They spend the most time working out odds while they get paid for it. For someone Hassan who needed an extra income, he sees betting as the best option. When you look at the people that often play bet, most of them are male.

Oftentimes, men have to deal with the social responsibility the society has placed on a male child to always strive towards financial independence for himself and sometimes the women around him even if they are his mother and sisters. Although the rightness or wrongness of betting is subject to individual interpretation of it, those who are addicted to it sometimes feel as if they have been locked out of options and the only way to shake off some of their financial burdens is by playing betting.

Certain things need to be noted by those that view betting as a moral issue. One of those things is that at some point in his life, a male child feels the need to start living like a man by assuming some responsibilities. During this time, he feels the need to clothe and feed himself and if need be provide his own shelter without the help of anybody. To make all these possible, he needs money. If he is like Olu who no longer has a job or Uche who has never been employed in his life and needs money to establish his own business, playing bet is a way of getting money to survive and also start a business.

Imagine what it feels like for an educated young man that is out of a job and what would come to his mind when he is assured that betting on odds could quadruple the little amount of money that trickled into his hand from close friends and some concerned relatives. If he predicted twice and won, he would likely see that as a bailout and try to win more by predicting correctly. If he wins two out of three-bet, he is assured of the efficacy of betting in putting money in his pocket. Before he realises, he has become a regular customer at the betting shop.

From being a regular customer, he hopes for the big day when he would win a substantial amount and venture into something else other than betting. Many in this class see betting as a form of self-empowerment where your brain is your tool. So far the government has failed in empowering them by providing jobs for them, they resorted to doing so on their own using their little resources. They are tired of seeing people in government squander resources and live in affluence while they live in penury. Instead of always blaming the government for their condition, they decided to help themselves. They know winning is not always assured but it is better than doing nothing. Besides, winning two or three out of five or so bets is not totally bad.

There are some who dabble into betting in a bid to double their income either because they feel they are underpaid or the number of people that need taken care of doesn’t make the income go round, hence the need to augment it. In fact, some of the people in this category are self-employed while some practice various crafts. But what they have in common is their dissatisfaction with their income. Thus, they are open to increasing it in any way they can. For this type of people, betting is for them a way to get more income rather than it is a necessity for survival against the pressure that comes with independent life. Like Hassan, they have no problem dipping their hands into their savings to bet with a small amount so far they are assured of winning at the end.

When they lose a substantial amount of money on wrong predictions, they could recoup the money in a day or two of hardworking. And when they win, they are tempted to increase their stake in the next round of betting. Many times, they lose more than they win. But they enjoy the circle of going to work during the day, bet during the night and when they win or lose, they come back the following day to stake again. And the circle continues in an endless run.

As it is now, betting among Nigerian youths is a practice that has continued to grow and has as a matter of fact come to stay. As I have said, I am not a judge in this case regarding its rightness or wrongness. But I believe people should find ways to make lives easier for themselves if the government wouldn’t make that happen. For me, betting is a harmless practice of putting your money where your mouth is. There is no harm in that. Insofar Ponzi schemes are not criminalized because they are all about increasing your money and enduring whatever risk that comes with it, betting too is not to bad. After all, life itself is like playing a bet. When you sleep at night, you are not assured of waking up the next day. Yet, you close your eyes hoping that somehow something will make you wake up and continue your life. If you are looking to condemn betting, that is all on you.

Shalom!
N.B All names in this article are fictional. Any resemblance to anyone living or dead is regretted.
Written by Segun Ogunlade