A few years ago, our fathers said gambling was sinful. They warned us to stay away from it as they warned us to stay away from narcotics. They said those who embraced gambling ran the risk of becoming slaves to it and ruining their lives. When we passed by pool betting houses, they didn’t let us cast sustained glances at them. Now, almost everybody is a gambler.

Before the prosperity preachers seized the pulpits, gambling was leprosy. The church didn’t just regard it as a financially debilitating addiction; it was a satanic get-rich-quick habit that could tear to pieces the moral fabric of society and church weaved with threads of hard work, merit and contentment. 

When prosperity preaching replaced the Repent or Perish dogma in the late 80s, the socially exuberant breed poured in. The abundance of grace and a little room for the flesh made the new church a win-win enterprise. Pentecostalism became the fad. The old Scripture Union fastidiousness has been supplanted by something more mellow, effervescent, and promising yet as redemptive. The new spirituality didn’t demand the old rigour. The promise of instant wealth by miracles spread to the tired orthodox churches and conditioned the youth. And normalised gambling. 

In truth, the old church had annual bazaars that allowed children to scratch cards and spin wheels, but only for a day or two. A week of licensed flirtation with it didn’t efface the stigma the church and society cut out for gambling. Gambling was concretely abhorrent. That was then. Now, the new church won’t do bazaars. They will pinch their noses at it. They are too righteous for such activities. For any activities reminiscent of that which drew the ire of young Jesus, forcing him to whip people in the temple. However, some tolerate raffle draws: you buy a ticket of 5000 naira for a dinner and qualify to win a car. That sort of thing. But we need not split hairs because the tragedy lies elsewhere.

 The new church’s devotion to miracles, including things like ‘miracle money’ and other magical financial concepts, have conspired to undermine the once sacrosanct spiritual illegitimacy of gambling. Many serious pastors now pray for their congregation to win jackpots. A thing that was peculiar to white garment sorcery. The relegation of hard work and merit by a devotion to the miraculous has blurred the boundaries and allowed young Christian consciences to permit sudden wealth, covetousness and foolhardiness. 

To quote the Director General of the Cross River State Lottery Gaming Agency, “People are beginning to understand the essence of gambling as the gaming industry sells hope and helps in wealth redistribution, creation of jobs, and revenue generation. The governments at various levels are doing their best to upgrade their platforms and working very hard to ensure all operators are brought to the tax net.”

So the horses have bolted. Governments are encouraging gambling habits so they can collect more in taxes. But they need not make the roguishly comical argument that it helps wealth distribution. That’s like saying that cocaine makes frustrated people happy. Mbappe, the French football star, has said he would never partake in advertising gambling. But football stars in Nigeria and other celebrities aren’t that thoughtful. The endorsement fee from gambling companies doesn’t leave them room to evaluate the morality of their involvement 

Data says 60 million Nigerians engage in daily betting. That figure probably doesn’t include the youth in rural areas who plough half of their miserable earnings into betting on the outcome of football matches in Italy and Russia. Some say it’s now a billion-dollar industry. The politicians are happy that it’s blooming. Lagos makes hundreds of millions from it annually. No politician seems bothered about the menace. But if gambling culture lasts and continues to dispossess the youth of cash and hope, the consequences will be an inexorable rise in drug and substance abuse, homelessness and crimes. 

A few months ago, I walked into one of the betting offices that have mushroomed across the country. No seat was empty. Young boys sat in front of computer screens, wincing and sweating. Digitalisation has made the addiction easy to cultivate and challenging to break. Their wallets and the betting apps are all on their phones. The improbable stories of the fortunate one-in-a-million who come by a win are also spread by phone to create the illusion of wealth distribution. 

Gambling in Nigeria is perpetuated by lousy governance and pervasive hopelessness. Everyone daydreams. Reality is often too bleak for comfort. People are willing to stake their only meal for the day, taking shots in the dark. They feel wretched. The idea is they can’t fall any lower. Then there is the other pressure. Society doesn’t give a hoot about the source of wealth. Money, including illicit money, brings instant honour and power. Everyone worships the rich man. So, the most effective role models are drug dealers, guy men, and thieving politicians. They are the personification of sudden wealth. Their negative influence is amplified by the obsession with exhibitionism, which this strain of riches comes with. 

If the new church weren’t as permissive, it would have been a dampener. But devotion to prosperity brings other demons. The new church is trapped in rivalry, outlandish projects and Hollywood ideas. Rather than being the biblical preservative salt, it has become the facilitator, the inveterate accomplice. The new church lacks the capacity for sober reflection and introspection. It’s nearly always suffocating in the stranglehold of unending financial deadlines. So, it can barely have the mental serenity to interrogate its insidious emasculation by mammonism.

 So, with a broken religious compass and myopic political leaders, the nation marches on relentlessly into bondage. Any hope in political manifestoes is now a joke. The hope in gambling is a mirage. But how did we lose collective compunction? Often, the truth can’t be seen because sportspeople and celebrities owe nothing to their fans. They sell gambling as an investment. And since ‘Ego mbute’ is allowed by the policing agencies to be so loquacious that it seems ubiquitous, its enticing power is quadrupled. 

The overall effect is that many poor people walk around with imaginary hopes that leave actual perforations in their pockets. As the betting companies multiply, the total impoverishment of the desperately poor appears unstoppable. The betting companies are milking them to crime and death. 

The church needs a revival. The country needs a rebirth.