By: Sherman C. Seequeh | Contributing Writer, Journalist, Public Intellectual
There are crises that arrive with sirens and speeches. With guns and bombs and machetes. And there are crises that creep quietly into homes and street corners until a nation wakes up too late and discovers its future has been stolen.
And one of such is this: Across Liberia today, children are gambling.
Not in secret. Not rarely. But openly—in mini-slot kiosks in Red Light, roadside booths in Paynesville, video clubs in Buchanan, corners in Ganta, Kakata, Duala, and New Kru Town. Boys in school uniforms, girls barely teenagers, students who should be studying are feeding coins into machines.
This is not entertainment. It is a national emergency.
And it is happening in a country already bleeding from another wound: our streets are flooded with zogoes—young people lost to drugs, abandoned hope, and despair. We see them sleeping under zinc stalls, wandering on Tubman Boulevard, Red Light, ELWA Junction, and the alleys of Sinkor. They are not criminals first. They are casualties of neglect.
Now gambling is recruiting the next wave.
A child who cannot find school fees sees betting as survival. A teenager already tempted by drugs sees gambling as quick money. A youth surrounded by corruption and hopelessness learns that luck matters more than hard work.
This is how nations decay quietly.
Let us speak honestly. Poverty is being exploited. Betting companies and illegal operators know families are desperate. They know young people want hope. So they sell illusion.
“Bet small, win big.”
But children cannot measure risk. They only learn addiction.
They lose lunch money.
They lose school time.
They lose discipline.
They lose hope.
And Liberia loses its future.
While the National Lottery Authority raids illegal operators, radio stations continue to flood the airwaves with gambling promotions. Every hour, jingles promise jackpots. Callers praise winnings. Betting companies sponsor shows.
Children hear it.
Where are the warnings about minors?
Where are the limits?
Where is the moral responsibility?
Radio is trusted in Liberian homes. When it glorifies gambling without restraint, it teaches youth that betting is normal. It tells them luck is success.
This is not harmless advertising. It is social engineering.
And it is happening in a country already fighting corruption, unemployment, and drug addiction. When zogoes wander our streets, when drugs are eating our youth, when petty corruption robs opportunity, and gambling is marketed as hope, then we are settling into a long national decline.
A society cannot survive three poisons at once: drugs, corruption, and addiction to gambling.
Underage gambling leads to theft when losses mount. It fuels school dropout. It breeds frustration and crime. It destroys discipline. It trains young minds to chase shortcuts instead of building skills.
A child who learns gambling learns impatience.
A child who learns impatience abandons effort.
A country built on impatience collapses.
Liberia knows the cost of lost generations. War took our youth once. Drugs are taking them again. Gambling may finish what despair began.
Who is protecting our children?
Parents are overwhelmed. Teachers are underpaid. Communities are struggling. But silence is not neutrality. Silence is permission.
Government must regulate gambling adverts. Media houses must accept responsibility. Betting shops must be forced to enforce age limits. Mini-slot machines must be banned near schools. Community leaders must speak. Churches and mosques must warn. Schools must teach addiction awareness.
And betting companies must hear this clearly: profit cannot come before childhood.
Liberia does not need another lost generation wandering between drugs, corruption, and gambling. It needs disciplined, educated youth who believe in work, not luck.
If we normalize betting among children while ‘Zogoes’ roam our streets and corruption blocks opportunity, then we are choosing decline. We are choosing to gamble away the nation itself.
It has been observed across communities, the blinking lights of mini-slot machines may look harmless in Liberia’s economic darkness—but when they shine beside drug addiction, street neglect, and unchecked corruption, they become warning beacons of a country settling into decay unless it acts now, decisively, to save its children.
~The End~
