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Nigeria has witnessed some significant changes in gambling which have resulted in more people becoming interested in the activity. In an attempt to increase participation, bookmakers have introduced a variety of innovations. Literature has established that this increased participation is inter-generational, cross-cultural, and inter-religious. Particularly among Nigerian youth, participation in gambling cuts across all age groups, socio-economic status, and gender. Both financial and social rewards have been identified as reasons why many youths gamble. Through a qualitative lens, this study investigates how the dynamics of gambling in recent times have affected the biographies of youth within a relatively deprived socio-economic locality in Kwara State, Nigeria. Thirty young gamblers between the ages of 15 and 29 were engaged in a semi-structured interview session. Drawing from the meaning of 'youth' from a sociological lexicon, one can advance this unique narrative of the transitions in gambling activities which can occur as a result of the youths' biographies and socio-economic status. Nigerian youth adopt three specific gambling types as a coping strategy in the face of a crisis-ridden socio-economic structure characterised by poverty, and unemployment. As such, gambling has become a normative activity experimented by the youth to survive the harsh economic conditions. This study therefore argues the need to situate the discourse of youth gambling within the social, cultural, and economic context in which they are located in Nigeria. In addition, the authors provide a framework for understanding the complexity of youth gambling in Nigeria. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Online sports betting is a popular recreational activity in Nigeria. Like other forms of gambling, risk of pathological progression exists for gamblers who continue betting despite severe financial and psychosocial consequences. In the present study, we examined whether this population of gamblers shows deficits in decision making and cognitive flexibility that have been documented in Western gambling populations. Thirty‐six online sports bettors and 42 non‐gambling participants completed a version of the Iowa gambling task (IGT) and an established set‐shifting task for the assessment of cognitive flexibility. The two groups did not differ significantly in the selection of disadvantageous decks on the IGT. In contrast, sports bettors committed significantly more errors on the set‐shifting task than non‐gambling control participants. As this performance deficit was not specific to trials requiring a set shift, it most likely resulted from gambling‐related changes in general cognitive or motivational abilities that are required to successfully complete challenging mental tasks. While our results illustrate that findings from Western populations cannot automatically be generalised to other contexts, it should be noted that we focused on only one particular type of gambling and included mostly participants with mild gambling‐related problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]