Where are our morals as a nation? They seem to have gone
with wind. Those days, gambling was considered an act for the inept minds. You
were considered a lazy person to be found around a gambling house. It was
normal to look at those who frequented such houses with disdain. And if a child
was caught gambling, he was dealt with by his parents or guardians. Gambling
was considered an act for aged men who were retired from active services and could
not work.
Today however, gambling is now the new normal thanks to the proliferation
of betting shops scattered around town and the customers are getting younger.
Those who used to hold the stick of morality are now the hatchers, leading the
way and showing the example for young people to follow.
Gambling now wears a new name “betting”. Get into a betting
house, you’d not be surprise to find her skilled workers as young men and women
in their late teens and early twenties. The bunch of those who patronize these
houses are mostly young people within the same age range who think these houses
are the surest route to wealth.
You will not be surprised to see a man who has worked so
hard during the day to earn a little income head to a betting shop at the end
of the working day in the thought that he will make more money. He ends up
spending all he has and returns home empty to a waiting and hungry family.
Check out the faces you’d’ find these days at these betting
houses. They are teenagers who don’t know better. They grow up with this
gambling mentality wasting away little resources they’ve been given by their
parents. Sometimes, they are tempted steal money to play a bet.
We grew up knowing that those who gambled were always poor.
We often wondered why the same faces frequented the pools houses if they were
making enough money from the trade. This led us to wandering if they ever won. And
they always won but the moneys obeyed the principle “easy come easy go”.
We are aware gambling is a game of chance. Who wants to live
his life on chance anyway? A chanced life is a life without choices. We always
wanted something definite for our lives. This thus led us to studying hard at
school with the perfect vision of the future.
What happens today however is that young people have now
developed a strong affiliation for gambling and they seem to love it spending
their money on what they call “white paper”. The average senior secondary
school chap is dreaming of the amount of money he would make from his bet when
all the games play out just like he had bet on his paper.
Young minds that should be busy creating beautiful ideas are
using their minds to punt games. You could be overwhelmed by a young person’s
knowledge of a football team for example and the games they have played, won
and lost in the last ten years, but you can’t get the answer to a simple
question like “what is a noun?”
You could easily imagine the joy on the faces of mostly
young people when leagues had to restart after a long period of shutdown due to
the Coronavirus pandemic that kept betting and pooling centers shut. They had
waited for too long.
The crave for fast money is turning the heads of young
people around. They want to make it fast but are not willing to use their heads
to develop creative ideas that can get them consistent and substantial income
beyond just hanging around the inconsistencies and depression of a gambling
life.
Step into one of these betting houses around town and you’d
see for yourself the “uhs and ahs” of disappointments that arrives from many of these gaming centers
when players realize that one game just “cut” that should have made them
millionaires. The question I often ask is “why put yourself through all these
stress?
Discontentment is a major reason people will gamble away
their hard earned wealth and regret the action afterwards yet this will not
deter him from playing next time around.
I can imagine the dreams a player would have knowing that he
had played a game that would earn him a million naira. His mind will be in
unrest, he’d hardly sleep and when its day he’d rush to check how the games turned
out the previous day only to discover that he missed some games. I am writing
this from an experienced mind.
By the way, why is it difficult for people to break out from
this gambling or betting habit even when they know it is hurting them? You’ve
perhaps heard of people who gambled their cars, houses and even wives. This is
not fake news.
Our young people are selling their destinies away at the
altar of the desire to make wealth that they have not worked for. It’s great to
stumble on some chance opportunity to make wealth but those who know too well
about money are aware that money not well earned develops wings. Those who know,
know.
You probably have heard of those who earned millions of
dollars from jackpots who became poor after just a year. You may say it can’t
happen to me, if I make a million dollars, I’d invest it in a business. Well,
those who get a chance to make money gambling or betting suddenly develop the
thought that it is the only way to earn income. The natural thought that
arrives in their mind is “if I can earn this way, I can still earn more this
way”. And they literally invest all they
have earned back into the system.
No gambler successfully manages a business outside gambling.
If they do make some money, their business suffers as a result. Gamblers turn
out gambling as a business and lifestyle. There’s that rush that tells them to
leave their business premises to go try their luck at the betting shop.
These days when betting has been made easier with application
on our phones, people can hide in their personal comfort and bet their lives
away without anyone apparently knowing. But eventually, the result is what
shows up on the outside.
The gambling or betting culture is developing a lack of disrespect
for elders. How will a young chap respect an old man who is earning income at
the betting shop just the same way he is doing? Who will respect you when he
knows you don’t earn your labour but depend on luck and chance to survive? Respect
is bought at the place where you earn your wealth.
What Nigeria needs isn’t gambling minds who are looking for
fast money to have their swell of meal and drinks. Nigeria needs people who are
creative enough to develop ideas and create opportunities where they can also
empower others to work and earn.
America, China, UK, Japan and their likes were not developed
by gamblers. They’ve developed because their countrymen chose to use their
minds and their heads to create and work out ideas for the betterment of their
society.
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