The Madness of Gambling is an in-depth investigation conducted by journalist and writer Pape Samba Kane, which tackles the harms of electronic gambling, which is increasingly widespread in Senegal. In this work, the author highlights the devastation caused by this addiction, which he describes as a “tragedy for youth” where even students are not spared. These young people who blindly lean towards the drift of these electronic gambling games commonly called “Naar-bi” to the detriment of their own future.
Thus, the author, through an article dating from 2023, returns to the case of the young boy who used his school fees to indulge in gambling, a practice which earned him a blank year. Finally, when his actions were discovered, he confessed: “I spent the money betting on different games at Naar-bi,” testifies the child, which illustrates the extent of the problem.
The journalist and writer Pape Samba Kane indicates that this book is a reissue of the investigation entitled “The lying poker of politicians” and published in 2006 by “Éditions Sentinelle”. A book of 264 pages “informed, researched, and very documented”, informs the author.
Thus, “between tax fraud, money laundering and other forms of white-collar banditry, which we had dealt with, human problems had challenged us more than anything else. Among these are gambling addiction, addiction, or compulsive gambling, whatever the name, which drives players crazy,” he said.
“The player is subject to the whims of a programmed machine”
So many abuses which pushed him to reissue the book with ”Moukat Editions”. A way for him to investigate these new casinos, right in the pockets of our children, 24 hours a day.
The writer considers electronic gambling games to be “deadly bets” which “make our children dependent to the point, for example, of spoiling their studies, some not hesitating to bet the school pay”.
The journalist maintains that these games on the internet or in these so-called Naar-bi kiosks constitute an “unequal fight between man and machine”. Here, he adds, “the player is subject to the whims of a machine programmed to reap more winnings than it will distribute, but the magic works.”
Thus, the “indebtedness and isolation” from which the massive and hypocritical advertising on sports betting and other electronic gambling comes are nothing compared to the “temptations of theft, dissimulation and lies; faced with the economic failures, the psychiatric abuses, the suicides which strike the victims of compulsive gambling”, the author is alarmed.
Before adding: “To do nothing in the face of this scourge is to participate in letting our youth plunge into a social and human decline, a degradation that can lead to all kinds of decline, even death. Letting these deadly Bets prosper will do more damage than the collective suicides of the Barsa walla Barsaq (Barça or death, Editor’s note),” he warned.
Published by Moukat Editions, “The madness of gambling” by senior journalist, and at the same time writer-poet Pape Samba Kane, will be presented on Saturday January 25, 2025 from 4 p.m., at the Maam Samba space in Ngor (Dakar) .
