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

Like many white-collar workers, Andrew Ejike gets dressed and leaves his home at Enugu city in the afternoon. A computer laptop bag, which he carries like a suitcase, indicates he is visiting the workplace. When he returns home from the day, his neighbours often ask:”How was work today?” And he replies by saying,”Work was nice”.
Interestingly, Ejike does not have a job, and certainly doesn’t have a formal employment. He is unemployed.
But he’s’created’ a’job’ for themself. He is, more or less, a ‘professional’ punter. Sports gambling is what Ejike does and when he leaves ‘work’ every morning on working times, the’workplace’ he goes is actually any sports bar around town.
On getting into the bar, Ejike would set up his notebook connect to the Internet using a mobile device, open the web site of any of those cellular sports betting companies and start working on predictions, or permutations, in order to come up with the bets he would place to 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 steady occupation because he graduated over ten decades ago.
In a conversation with our correspondent, Ejike explained that he lost two previous jobs after the firms he was working for closed down.
“The pay from 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 larger and more secure. But I could not even hold on to those jobs since the firms closed down and nothing better came together,” he explained.

Read more: sportscoverage.net