HOW NIGERIANS SPENT N1.5TRN WATCHING FOREIGN FOOTBALL

Another weekend has come when people from across the country, particularly youths in their large numbers, from street to street troop to the various football viewing centres in their neighborhood to feed their eyes with spectacular games of football. Football is sweet no doubt. The skillful dribbles, superlative goals, amazing saves and precise kicks all make football irresistible. I used to be an ardent fan of European football; I can even miss a class not to miss a match.

However, I stopped watching foreign league matches a few years ago when I realised how much my passion for foreign football was destroying our country’s economy. We can’t be destroying our own country by ourselves and turn around to ask government to do magic.

When I was still an ardent supporter of Chelsea, I once went to bed hungry because Liverpool defeated us in a Champions league semi-final match. I think that was in 2005.

However, I stopped watching foreign football a few years ago. I had to endure the slight discomfort of not watching European league, for a greater benefit of strengthening our naira.

Here is how. Every week, Nigerians in their millions gather across various football viewing centres to watch football matches. They pay a token of N100 to have the most pleasurable moment of their lives. In some weeks, they watch two, three or even four matches. For the purpose of this write up, let us assume they watch only one match per week.

We all know Nigerians love football. That is one thing that unites the country, apart from music and tribalism. More than 70% of our 180 million population comprise young people. That means over 120 million youths are in Nigeria. Assuming only about 20% love football, that’s about 25 million population. But let’s assume just 20 million youths watch football every week.

This is not an exaggeration. In my area in Ilorin, I mean just one area; we have more than 10 viewing centres. People can afford not to eat than not to watch football.

Now, let’s do some calculations. If 20 million people watch football every week and each person does so with a token of N100, that costs us a whopping sum of N2 billion in just one week. If N2 billion is multiplied by 56 weeks in a year, that gives us N112 billion.

Although, I have been watching European league before 2004, I became so addicted that year and between 2004 and 2017, that is 13 years. So, if football lovers spent N112 billion to watch foreign matches in one year, multiply that figure by 13 years and guess how much it is?

N1.456 trillion. That’s the amount we spent watching football in 13 years.

Now, where does this money go? I mean, where does the N1.5 trillion we spend on watching football go? It goes abroad. We send the money to Europe to strengthen their economy and currency, while devaluing our own. We pay to the football viewing centres. They pay the money to DSTV, who then convert the money into dollars and send it to Europe.

That’s one of the many ways we destroy Nigerian currency. In economic terms, they call it capital flight.

A little research about capital flight tells me that this leads to a disappearance of wealth, and is usually accompanied by a sharp drop in the exchange rate of the affected country—depreciation in a variable exchange rate regime, or a forced devaluation in a fixed exchange rate regime. This fall is particularly damaging when the capital belongs to the people of the affected country, because not only are the citizens now burdened by the loss in the economy and devaluation of their currency, but probably also, their assets have lost much of their nominal value.

So, the next time you want to complain that “dollar don rise’’, don’t forget to ask yourself how much you contributed to the devaluation of the naira.

For me, I have stopped watching foreign football some years back. I stopped when I realised the damage I am doing to our country’s economy by helping to devalue our money through capital flight.

Our local football may not be as sophisticated as European league, but trust me, we have wonderful players down here. I also heard recently that Nigeria Television Authority (NTA) will now be showing our league matches live. If you can’t go the stadium to watch it live, watch it live on NTA. Abdulrazaq O. Hamzat, Nigerian referee and the Executive Director of Foundation for Peace Professionals