These Things I Feel - Niran (SPORTS BETTING AND THE YOUTH)

I have finally decided to come out with a piece on this after losing an unmentionable amount of Naira to gambling, yes gambling! I said it; let the truth set you free.

Now we have so many bookmakers out there and betting sites (I will not name names but I am pretty sure you know what I am talking about).



It is a little bit alarming the way I see many youths out there flock to the betting sites and deposit their hard-earned (or not) money into the pockets of bookmakers. They would typically accumulate a minimum of 5 games with varying odds then start praying for each individual game on that ticket. And then one useless game will mess the whole ticket up! Ticket wey you play with two thousand naira (N2000) with wonderful odds and potential winnings of two hundred and fifty thousand naira (N250000). Just one match! That kain ting dey pain ehn. Stop looking at me jare, I am not talking from experience.

The point is little by little, we are nurturing a generation of gamblers; of men who don’t want to work hard, sweat much but earn huge amounts of money. I totally get that ideology. Sometimes, I even subscribe to that ideology. After all, in the words of M.I, money slow to enter but money quick to go.

This is just a shout-out to my fellow young Nigerians, especially the ones that started out into Sports Bet with the aim of doing good things for their family members: buying Dad some nice shoes, giving that little brother/sister extra pocket money, buying mom that good quality material for her to sew to her heart’s desire. The road to Hell is paved with good intentions; slowly but surely, you can get sucked into the quicksand of sports betting and clawing your way out? It will not be so easy.

The aim of this piece is not to bash Betting sites; after all man must whack and if this is what does it for you, carry on. Just be guided. There is so much more inside of you, so much more out there that you can do to diversify your streams of income. Don’t put in over 70% of your salary (again, not from experience!) because u dey manage if u manage am like this, add this match join this match and calculate odds, u will have enough to buy a Mercedes G-wagon.

God bless our legitimate hustles, amen.

@NiranNoni