Unemployed Nigerians find solace in sports betting, make it full-time job
Like most white-collar workers, Andrew Ejike gets dressed and leaves his house at Enugu town in the morning. A computer notebook bag, which he carries like a suitcase, indicates that he is visiting the office. When he returns home in the evening, his neighbours often ask:”How was work today?” And he answers by saying,”Work was fine”.
Interestingly, Ejike does not have a job, and certainly does not have a formal employment. He’s unemployed.
But he’s’created’ a’job’ for himself. He is, more or less, a ‘professional’ punter. Sports gambling is what Ejike does and when he leaves for’work’ every morning on working times, the’office’ he goes is really any sports bar around town.
On getting to the pub, Ejike would set up his notebook connect to the Internet with a mobile device, open the website of any of the mobile sports betting companies and begin working on forecasts, or permutations, so as to think of the stakes he would place for the day.
A bachelor’s degree holder in Estate Management in a national university, Ejike was sustaining himself and his young family with proceeds from sports betting after failing to secure a stable employment since he graduated more than ten years ago.
In a conversation with our correspondent, Ejike clarified he lost two previous jobs following the companies he had been working for shut down.
“The cover in the jobs was not much anyway but I think there’s dignity in labor. I was also expecting that over the line I’d get something bigger and more secure. But I could not even hold on to those jobs because the firms closed down and nothing better came along,” he said.
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