The European football season has come, gone and forthcoming, including the mad rush of Nigerian youths that patronise online betting houses and firms.
It’s now a normal spectacle when you go into the streets in major cities in Nigeria and you see queues of young men fighting to place their bets on the five major leagues in world football. The English premier league, Spanish Primera la Liga, Italian Serie A, German Bundesliga and the French league. Other minor leagues are not excluded when desperate jobless Nigerian youth jolt to make cash through any means possible.
It’s not something entirely new when you put on a television set and see adverts by mega betting houses, on Super Sports and other sports channels. It’s not false to say that the betting houses are becoming the number one sponsors of football clubs, television viewing rights, sponsor of major sports programs and more.
It’s not wrong if I tell you the major negative impact online betting has done to our teeming unemployed youth. Like smoking, pornography and major habit that come with addictive tendencies, online betting, sadly may be considered as a thing that has come to stay.
How do you deal with the crop of youths that see a trial and error approach as a veritable tool to make sincere cash?
Like nicotine, caffeine and other addictive related drugs, sports betting is gradually taking its toll in our society, especially among the so-called leaders of tomorrow.
With the winning and the sweet mouthed nature of bookmakers, many Nigerian youths have incurred huge debts that come with undesirable consequences from folks that give them the credit.
I was in my apartment late last year when I heard the wailing of a young man that was staying opposite my compound.
Why was he wailing? His creditors came for their money with interest. He had sold off his father’s television and home theatre set just to offset half of his debts but the other half including the interest have been left unpaid for months. He was a chronic gambler with debts littering everywhere.
Some commentators would want to sight the occasional winning encountered by gamblers but it’s just a pinch compared to losers. Ninety-five percent of times where winning is seen, it is been achieved by the entrepreneur that funded the enterprise. They take advantage of the naivety and addiction of gamblers who continue gambling with so much faith that they will get back their false investment.
Let’s face it head on not just blinded by the media hype and adverts where these bookmakers employ the services of sports celebrities to make it look very morally legit.
A man with a lack of foresight and innovation is a man that sees kalo kalo (gambling) as a means of getting rich and becoming an overnight millionaire. How can one concede to the place of trial and error to earn a living?
Most gamblers suffer from high blood pressure because of anxiety and fear to those bold enough to watch the matches they have place their bet on. The fear of losing and the eagerness to always win is the precursor to such health issues.
Like the constant intake of cocaine, gambling is a form of mental disorder that can lead to suicidal attempt when there is a case of constant losing, incurring of debt and the inability to pay back.
Some gamblers resort to stealing and armed robbery just to pay off their debt.
Poverty is just a two-faced stranger knocking on the doors of gamblers while laziness is the name of a man that gambles.
It’s so annoying that many sports enthusiast and sports house have been silence about this menace. The government should bring up sustainable policies to kerb these excesses and a regulatory body should be established to deal with regulatory offenders. It might not deal with the morality but it’s a step in the right direction.
Like Georges Pompidou quotes, “There are three roads to ruin; women, gambling, and technicians. The most pleasant are with women, the quickest is with gambling, but the surest is with technicians.”
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It’s a pity, the soccer loving world never gave enough publicity about the transition of the world soccer boss, Joao Havelange. Who left this planet at the aged of 100, this month in his native country, Brasil, during the just concluded Olympic games. He did a lot for the round lather game of football, after taking over from English man late Stanley Ross in 1974.