How ‘area boys’ in Lagos made windfall of election results

Last Saturday’s Presidential and National Assembly elections across the country brought the roads to desolation following the mandatory restriction of vehicular movement. Office workers, shop owners, marketers and transporters all took a break from work to exercise their civic duty, or simply stay at home. In the elections, politicians engaged in a contest of who […]

Last Saturday’s Presidential and National Assembly elections across the country brought the roads to desolation following the mandatory restriction of vehicular movement. Office workers, shop owners, marketers and transporters all took a break from work to exercise their civic duty, or simply stay at home.

In the elections, politicians engaged in a contest of who would win, and the prizes were the Aso Villa and the two chambers of the National Assembly. In the Lagos metropolis, urchins, ‘area boys’ and gamblers generally also saw in the elections an interpretation of their propensity for gambling. Only, in the gamble by the street boys, the politicians themselves were the pawn to be used, and money was the prize.

When our reporter arrived at polling units 034 and 035 located inside  Agidingbi Grammar School at about 3.30pm that Saturday after the  downpour that slowed down electoral activities, what he saw were the boys a few meters away from the voting area, loudly arguing about who of the politicians would win the elections in those units.

Before our reporter could blink his eyes, the boys had started placing bets on the expected outcome of the Presidential result, as well as those of the Senatorial and House of Representatives.

Among themselves, they had quickly agreed on an umpire to collect the various bets from about 10 persons apiece. The bet amounts ranged from N500 to N2,000 from each gambler.

Within minutes, the size of the game had expanded considerably. When the amounts on bets and the identity of persons placing the bets became too much for the umpire to retain in his memory, he reached for a sheet of paper to properly record names and amounts on bets, to avoid confusion.

The activities of the boys elicited excitement and curiosity from the voters on the queues. The boys appealed to the electoral officers and party agents to ensure an accurate counting of the votes, saying the elections had gone beyond a game whose results politicians would have to wait for many hours, to one whose results they, the gamblers, needed immediately. Whenever the electoral officers announced the results of any particular round of election, a resounding applause would emanate more from the winning group of young gamblers than from supporters of the contesting politicians.

When our reporter approached one of the beneficiaries, who identified himself simply as Akeem, to enquire what could have triggered the betting rounds, he said, “This polling unit is very delicate. Elections here have always been very close to call because this area is a mix of the elites and the masses.

“While there are rich men residing around here, there are also artisan workshops, like the Mechanic Village at Agidingbi First Gate bus stop there. There are also lots of Igbo traders there. The mix in the environment ensures that different candidates appeal to different people.

“So unlike some polling units where you can easily and correctly predict that some particular candidates will win particular elections, you can’t say that here. It has become something like sheer luck for a candidate to emerge a winner here. That luck element is what triggered the gambling game here.”

The eye-catching activity at polling units 034 and 035 in Agidingbi simply underlined the betting phenomenon that has become the fancy of youths in Lagos for quick money in the last couple of years.

Sports betting in Nigeria has become as much of a national sport as sports themselves. The practice is legal in all 36 states of the country, as well as in Abuja, but is more widely undertaken in the Lagos metropolis.

As reported in 2014, about 60 million Nigerians (about 30 per cent of the population) were estimated to be placing sports bets, especially on football, per day around the country.

Not only is betting on football becoming more widespread, gamblers are betting more often. In one study of youth football betting, more punters staked bets every day rather than once, twice and even three and four times a week, with the majority of bets placed on cash ticket coming in at between N100- N500.  The study also shows that more than half of the respondents bet even when they are broke.