‘Yet, they didn’t sign me’: the production of precarity in amateur and semi-professional football in Nigeria

Abstract

This paper investigated how the experiences of precarity are produced in amateur and semi-professional football in Nigeria through qualitative interviews with former amateur and semi-professional footballers. Though a few studies have highlighted the precarities that football career aspirations produce among West African youth, the mechanisms through which such precarious experiences develop remain loosely articulated. This paper fills this gap. The findings revealed that precarious experiences emanate from an overbearing athletic identity, a disconnect between imagined mobility through football and actual opportunity, institutional failures, and corruption and exploitation. The policy implications include a need for a framework for dual career and life after football programme in amateur and semi-professional clubs, centred around information, health education and skills training, as well as institutional and regulatory reforms for better governance of the sector.

Keywords:

• Precarity
• athletic identity
• identity foreclosure
• African football migration
• amateur and semi-professional football

1. Introduction

Professional football is shaping the imaginations of social and spatial mobility of thousands of West African youths (Darby et al., 2007; Darby et al., 2022; Esson, 2015a) and fostering a talent development and scouting economy positioned to extract value (Darby et al., 2022). This economy involves both local and international actors working through formal structured football academies, and amateur and semi-professional clubs (Darby et al., 2007; 2022; Dubinsky, 2022; Esson, 2015a). In many circumstances, youths at these clubs spend several years developing their athletic talent. However, the investment in a prospective professional career, especially as a mobility or migration strategy, is an effort that scarcely produces the desired spatial and social mobility (Darby et al., 2022; Ungruhe & Esson, 2017). For majority of the athletes in the amateur and semi-professional clubs, the dream of a stable professional career is never realised, and experiences within these clubs expose them to precarious lives (Darby et al., 2022). Precarity, here, refers to a state of uncertainty and insecurity with regards to livelihood and general well-being. These manifest in various ways among former athletes, including livelihood struggles, ‘waithood’ (delayed adulthood), the trauma of disappointment, and the challenge of finding new anchors of meaning, etc. (Brown & Potrac, 2009; Darby et al., 2022).

A few studies have highlighted the precarities that these career aspirations produce among West African youth using the experiences of Ghanaian academy trainees (e.g. Darby et al., 2022; Esson, 2015a, 2015b, 2013; Ungruhe & Esson, 2017). Others have also studied how such precarities may continue for African footballers who achieve migration to Europe and Asia (Acheampong, 2021; Agergaard & Ungruhe, 2016; Darby et al., 2022; Ungruhe & Agergaard, 2021). However, the mechanisms through which these precarious experiences develop remain loosely articulated. As the most populous black country and one of Africa’s leading exporters of football talent to Europe (Poli et al., 2021, 2016), Nigeria is one of the countries where this process is very pronounced. It provides a suitable context for understanding how precarity is produced for pre-professional footballers. Amateur (unpaid) and semi-professional (paid a subsistence) football in Nigeria are mostly where the pursuit of a professional career is enacted. They are two closely interlinked levels of the game in West Africa that largely operate as platforms for the development, specululation and trade of talented footballers (Darby et al., 2022). In this paper, the conditions, processes and practices through which precarity is produced in amateur and semi-professional football in Nigeria is examined. It posed the following question: How is precarity produced in amateur and semi-professional football in Nigeria? To investigate this research problem, the theoretical concept of precarity, and its relationship with African football labour, is reviewed. In addition, the theoretical concepts of athletic identity and identity foreclosure, and how they are linked with the precarity of football labour, is examined.

2. Literature and theory

2.1. Precarity and African football labour

Precarity, as a sociological concept, describes a condition where work is ‘uncertain, unstable, and insecure and in which employees bear the risks of work (as opposed to businesses or the government) and receive limited social benefits and statutory protections’ (Kalleberg & Vallas, 2017a, p. 1). Han (2018, p. 336) explains that precarity as a sociological category denotes the conditions of those who ‘live through intermittent labour, while thwarted in their aspirations for a “good life”’. Precarious work is low paying, unstable, unsafe, without opportunities for upskilling, and lacking in basic workers’ protection and rights (Kalleberg & Vallas, 2017a). It has ‘pervasive consequences’ (Kalleberg, 2009) that are ‘not restricted to work and the workplace, but also affect many non-work domains, including individual health and well-being, family formation, and the nature of social life more generally’ (Kalleberg & Vallas, 2017a, p. 2). Precarity has implications for ‘work situations and career opportunities that workers can expect’ (Kalleberg & Vallas, 2017a, p. 1), not only as lived in the present, but also for future prospects and life outcomes (Han, 2018; Kalleberg & Vallas, 2017a).

Social theorists (Bauman, 2000; Beck, 1992; Giddens, 1991) traced precarity to the emergence of modernity. Other scholars argue that it is the outcome of structural processes of the neoliberal economy, including de-unionisation; the rise of shareholder influence over other stakeholders, such as workers; globalisation of capital and reallocation of production to low-wage economies or low-wage migrants; and the digital revolution that has reorganised work (Kalleberg, 2009; Kalleberg & Vallas, 2017a, 2017b). Neo-liberal state policies also played a significant role as public spending cuts eroded social welfare protections, pushing many people into poverty and dependence on unstable low wage jobs (Kalleberg, 2009). For instance, the Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAP) of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank implemented in many African economies in the 1980s, have been blamed for the withdrawal of welfare funding, decline in wages, job losses and high rate of youth unemployment (Geo-JaJa & Mangum, 2001; Konadu-Agyemang, 2001; Logie & Woodroffe, 1993). Young people resorted to unstable, unsafe and low wage jobs or sought opportunities for migration to survive (Akwawua, 2001; Geo-JaJa & Mangum, 2001; Logie & Woodroffe, 1993). These economic conditions, together with rapid population growth and state corruption and weakness, continue to produce a class of ‘disposable people’ who are plentiful in supply, desperate for survival, cheap to maintain, and can be discarded at whim (Bales, 1999).

The global football economy is in many ways connected with precarity (Roderick, 2006), and more so for African athletes (Agergaard & Ungruhe, 2016). Firstly, failing states and economies create feelings of despondency among African youth. (Okeke Uzodike & Whetho, 2011). Literature has shown that the aspirations of many African youths to engineer social mobility through football is related to the limited opportunities for social mobility and the lack of means to perform the obligations of masculinity and of intergenerational care (Acheampong et al., 2019; Besnier et al., 2018; Darby et al., 2022; Ejekwumadu, 2023a; Kovač, 2022). Ungruhe and Esson (2017) explain that the allure of a football career among Ghanaian youths represents a ‘social negotiation of hope’ to ‘overcome widespread social immobility’. Esson (2013) has also explained how many Ghanaian youths abandon schooling in pursuit of a football dream because of dwindling returns on investment in education. Ejekwumadu (2023b) has noted that the imagination of a football career is part of the new narrative of ‘blowing’ (to experience sudden fortune), a construct fuelled by instances of social mobility outside of the conventional careers accessible through schooling.

Secondly, in the last couple of decades, the European football market has increased the share of players from the global South, particularly West Africa and South America (Darby, 2000; Darby et al., 2022; Poli, 2010). In this ‘Global Production Network’ (GPN) of football labour, African footballers are both ‘labourers’ and ‘commodities’ (Darby et al., 2022), albeit operating around the peripheries of the global production and consumption of football labour. African youth athletes, are thus, ‘comodities’ that are ‘speculated’ on by various actors in the football industry hoping to extract value (Darby et al., 2022). A key feature of this economy is the sheer numbers of African youths willing to ‘try their luck’, and whose entry and exit happen without notice (Darby et al., 2022; Esson, 2015a; Ungruhe & Esson, 2017). As Darby et al. (2022, p. 66) maintain, the production of African football labour for the global football economy ‘is riven with uncertainty and there are no gurantees that entry into production will translate inexorably into transnational mobility or sustanied careers abroad’. For majority, the aspired career leads to ‘involuntary imobility’ - ‘the discrepancy between the desire to be spatially mobile and the ability to realise the results’ (Darby et al., 2022, p.113; Van der Meij et al., 2017). Besides, even when palyers sign for local professional clubs in Nigeria, ‘promised work conditions’ may be reneged upon (Onwumechili & Akpan, 2021, p. 174). As Kalleberg and Vallas (2017a) noted, in precarious work, the risks are borne by the employees. Amateur and semi-professional football, therefore, constitute a field for the cheap ‘outsourcing’ (Kalleberg, 2009) of the highly risky enterprise of youth talent development.

Thirdly, African players’ precarity extends into the professional and transnational career (Darby et al., 2022). For many who achieve transnational migration, their journeys continue to be marked by uncertainty and vulnerability (Darby et al., 2022). Factors such as cultural and climatic differences, power inequalities in employment, visa and residency requirements, racial discrimination and inadequate formal education continue to precarise their careers (Acheampong, 2021; Agergaard & Ungruhe, 2016; Darby et al., 2022; Ejekwumadu, 2023c; Ungruhe, 2014; Ungruhe & Agergaard, 2021). Poli (2006) highlighted the ‘segmented’ European football labour market, where African players are disproportionately concentrated in the lower leagues and are sought after due to their low wages and a speculated return on investment from their transfer. Ungruhe (2014) described how African athletes in Europe are confined to stereotypes that denote physical strenght, speed and stamina, but less of intelligence and tacticality. While such stereotypes may, in certain situations, be exploited by the players to navigate the talent market, it is generally limiting and weakens their career prospects (Ungruhe, 2014). Furthermore, they have been shown to have fewer opportunities for continued work in other roles on retirement, and limited income and savings from salaries, make transiting out of the game delayed and quite difficult (Agergaard & Ungruhe, 2016; Ungruhe & Agergaard, 2021).

2.2. Athletic identity, identity foreclosure, and precarity

The theoretical concepts of athletic identity and identity foreclosure are interlinked with the precarity of football careers, and offer further analytical tools for understanding how precarity is produced in youth and amateur football. Athletic identity refers to ‘the degree to which an individual identifies with the athlete role’ as the central concept of the self (Brewer et al., 1993, p. 237). A strong athletic identity entails that an individual’s self-definition and self-worth is highly dependent on athletic participation and success (Beamon, 2012). Elite athletes committed to a professional career are often recognised for their exceptional athletic qualities and tend to conceive self in terms of the athlete role (Beamon, 2012).

A strong athletic identity may benefit young athletes in terms of its positive correlation with commitment, performance, competitiveness, and team orientation (Daniels et al., 2005; Seiberth et al., 2017). However, literature indicates that it may lead to identity foreclosure (Adler & Adler, 1991; Brown & Hartley, 1998; Brown & Potrac, 2009). Identity foreclosure happens ‘when individuals prematurely make a firm commitment to an occupation or ideology’ (Petitpas, 1978, p. 558). It is a ‘serious,’ yet ‘premature’, commitment to a career pathway without a careful consideration of the prospects and possible alternative choices (Miller & Kerr, 2003, p. 212). This usually happens when young people seek to ‘avoid an identity crisis’ and ‘gain a sense of safety and security’ (Petitpas, 1978, p. 558). Young athletes at the pre-professional stages, who invest their lives in the pursuit of a career in professional sports, usually develop an ‘exclusive athletic identity’ (Brewer et al., 2000; Brown & Potrac, 2009, p. 144). Brewer and Petitpas (2017, p. 119) note that ‘the psychological and social dynamics of sport participation may be particularly conducive to the development of identity foreclosure in athletes’. In addition, they write that ‘when athletes get enmeshed in the sport system they may not engage in exploratory behaviour’ (Brewer & Petitpas, 2017, p. 119). This may be caused by the amount of time required for sport participation, and the social recognition and rewards derived from sporting achievements (Brewer & Petitpas, 2017).

An exclusive athletic identity may provide athletes with a clear sense of self early in life, albeit ‘at the expense of personal freedom and opportunities for growth and creativity’ (Petitpas, 1978, p. 558). As Brown and Potrac (2009, p. 144) noted, athletes ‘with a strong athletic identity are less likely to explore other educational, career and lifestyle options due to their commitment and involvement in sport’. Esson (2013) and Ejekwumadu (2023a) have demonstrated how the aspired athletic career may undermine commitment to education and vocational training among West African youths. Athletes may, therefore, leave the game with little preparation for alternative careers and struggle for new anchors of meaning for restarting their lives (Brown & Potrac, 2009). Research has also shown a correlation between an exclusive athletic identity and substance use, such as alcohol consumption (Murray, 2001) and performance enhancing drugs (Piffaretti, 2011). It is also a risk factor for burnout (Coakley, 1992) and playing with injury (Weinberg et al., 2013). Both substance abuse (Morissette et al., 2006) and injury (Roderick, 2006) are important sources of precarity for athletes.

3. Research methodology and design

3.1. Ethical approval

The study was approved by the Ethics Committee of the Faculty of Economics and Social Sciences, University of Tuebingen.

3.2. Epistemic approach

This paper approached knowledge from the foundations of social constructionism (Sommers-Flanagan & Sommers-Flanagan, 2015). Constructionism holds that knowledge is constructed by individuals through their interaction with the social and natural world (Sommers-Flanagan & Sommers-Flanagan, 2015, p. 370). By this, both the structures of experience and the agentic reflexivity of the individual are important in the construction of reality. This epistemological position was employed because career experiences in sports are subjectively constituted and rendered phenomena. Through the social constructionist approach of this research, emphasis was placed on the players’ sense making process as shaped by the social context of their experiences. Athletes’ narratives, therefore, represent a social construction of reality, nevertheless, they are not autonomously enacted subjectivities, but contextualised within their lived social world and the world of sports that have shaped their experiences. On the other hand, deconstructing the subject’s relayed meanings involves epistemic reflexivity, an acknowledgement of ‘the social relation between knowledge and knower’ (Maton, 2003, p. 57), in the social construction of meaning. This entails that the researcher is an active participant in the meaning making process.

3.3. Participants

The participants in this study comprised of eight former pre-professional male athletes and a coach (Table 1). All the participants had either stopped playing football or stopped actively pursuing a professional football career. The participants were approached and purposively selected through contacts in grassroots football known to the author from the northern, southwestern, and southeastern parts of the country. Nigeria is a diverse society (ethnic, religious, etc.) and social background may shape experiences. The selection of the respondents across regions was to make sure that as many experiences as may be shaped by this diversity are captured.

Table 1. Participants’ information.

Name	Current age	Role	Level
Olu	27	player	Amateur
Adam	32	player	Amateur
Niyo	32	player	Amateur
Kasim	39	player	Amateur
Akeem	34	player	Amateur
Osaro	35	player	Semi-professional league
Wale	42	player	Semi-professional league
Onyeka	47	player	Semi-professional league
Dogo	Not stated	Coach	Amateur Semi-professional league Professional league

Note: Real names of participants, locations and organisations have been replaced with pseudonyms.

3.4. Interviews

Data were collected through semi-structured face-to-face interviews between March and May 2023. The author conducted all the interviews in English, except for one respondent where a research assistant conducted the interview due to language barrier. The respondents were briefed about the purpose of the study, their role and rights (a general information note was provided), after which they signed consent forms. The interview locations varied according to the respondents’ preference and convenience. The interview guide contained open ended questions that afforded the respondents the freedom to tell their stories. For example, they were asked questions such as ‘when and how did football become a serious engagement for you?’; ‘tell us about the most important experiences you had while playing for your club(s)?’; and ‘while at your club, how else did you spend your time when not training or playing football?; etc.’ These questions only spurred the discussion, while the emerging issues determined the direction for further probing. The interviews lasted for about two hours on the average.

3.5. Data processing and analysis

The author listened to each interview and then transcribed to text, using the naturalized-intelligent verbatim that emphasises meaning over strict transcription of every spoken word (McMullin, 2023) (the sole interview conducted in another language was translated to English and transcribed to text by the research assistant). The analysis was conducted through an interpretive analytical process (Sheard, 2022). It is a ‘creative’ and iterative process that prioritises meaning over description. As Maton (2003, p. 54) noted, ‘facts are inseparable from the observer’. In interpretive analyses, the researcher’s role in meaning making is very important, as he/she draws from own knowledge and experiences (in this case, as a member of the subjects’ cultural community), and literature and theory, while reflexively interacting with the research data to arrive at meaningful interpretations of the respondents’ narrative (Sheard, 2022). Interpretive analysis goes beyond merely summarising the respondent’s narrative, but seeks to make them meaningful through interpretation (Sheard, 2022), by connecting the various strands of meaning expressed within the overall narrative and organising them into explanatory threads.

To conduct the analysis, the author first listened to the audio tapes, repeating sections where issues that appeared to be of interest were narrated, while taking notes. Then, the transcripts were read and reread to tease out strands of meaning. A strand of meaning represented a specific situation, action or behaviour. Attention was paid to what was being said, what it meant (to the respondent and to the researcher), and how it was connected to all other meaningful constructs emanating from the overall narrative of the individual respondent and of all the other respondents, and to theory and literature. Connected strands of meaning were brought under a common thematic ensemble that explained related behaviours, practices and conditions within youth and amateur football that generate precarity for the players (Table 2). For instance, intensification of time committed to football and playing with injury, emerged as separate strands of meaningful behaviour, but were both meaningfully connected to a theoretical and thematic ensemble, the centralisation of the athletic identity. In reporting findings, direct quotations from the respondents were used to support interpretations.

Table 2. Thematic table.

Thematic ensemble	Connected meaningful behaviour, practice or condition
Centralisation of the athletic identity	Intensification of time committed to football Neglect of educational or vocational training Life planning and decision-making significantly influenced by positive evaluation and recognition of sporting talent by society Competition at the expense of health and well-being Inability to transit from football related self-concepts
Disconnect between imagination and opportunity	Inordinate faith in the transformational potentials of football talent Eurocentric imagination of spatial and social mobility Weak migration infrastructures of amateur and semi-professional football Unfriendly regimes of border control Limited opportunities in the local professional league
Institutional failures	Poor coaching and staffing Infrastructural deficiencies Disregard for contractual agreements Absence of standard healthcare management frameworks Spiritualising injury and healthcare
Corruption and exploitation	Bribes demanded in exchange for selection Fraudulent activities of intermediaries

4. Findings and discussion

4.1. Centralisation of the athletic identity

In line with literature (e.g. Beamon, 2012; Brewer & Petitpas, 2017; Brewer et al., 1993), the narratives of all the respondents showed that their athletic identity was the most important concept of the self, which significantly overshadowed all other identities during their time in football. This development exposed them to identity foreclosure and other precarising experiences in the course of their pursuit and after it. The foregrounding of the athletic self was manifested in various behaviours and actions. From an early stage, participation required the intensification of time and effort dedicated to football over other activities. For most of the respondents, the early years of their pursuit were dedicated solely to football despite being either unpaid (amateur) or only receiving a subsistence (semi-professional), and without guaranteed pathways to a professional football career. Adam, who played only at amateur clubs, expressed a clear manifestation of identity foreclosure (Brewer & Petitpas, 2017) when he recounted exclusively choosing football over the opportunity for higher education at the early stages of his football pursuit:

I wanted to focus on football and that is why I never pursued admission. I saw it as a career, I saw it as a pathway. Yeah, this is what I want to do. I’m not going to any school. This is what I want to do (Adam).

This neglect of education and vocational training by African youth athletes has been highlighted by Ejekwumadu (2023a) and Dubinsky (2022). For most of the athletes, attempts at exploring other opportunities for personal development happened a number of years later, when doubts about their prospects set in and they began to think about life after football. This made transition into alternative adulthood pathways a difficult and more challenging process.

Later in early 2001, I moved to CAP FC in Abuja, but unfortunately, they didn’t sign me at that time. I came back to Bori Town, but in 2003, I played Amateur 2 for them and they were promoted to amateur 1, and I also played. So, from that time, I moved back to Karo, because I had just seen that after football, what will happen if I can’t make it to professional football? I needed to go back to School (Wale).

The second experience that contributed to the centralisation of the athletic identity emanated from the social recognition that the athletes received from the society because of their athletic abilities. Brewer and Petitpas have previously noted that athletes’ overwhelming athletic identity may derive from ‘the approval they receive from peers for participating in sport, and the intrinsic and extrinsic rewards accrued from athletic accomplishments’ (2017, p. 119). This was observed among some of the respondents whose central identities became that of a talented footballer, as they were widely spoken about, accorded special privileges, and given nicknames after international football superstars. For instance, while Wale was popularly nicknamed ‘Cantona’ (former Manchester United and France international), Niyo came to be fondly referred to as ‘Niyoball’. This consolidated their conviction in their abilities and prospects of reaching the highest levels of football. Consequently, they further intensified the effort and time they put into chasing a football career, no matter how remote success appeared. Wale aptly encapsulated this when he narrated the influence such social recognition and being nicknamed after a world great had on him.

At that time, I just became a something in Bori Town that people knew that this is a very talented player like Cantona. People call me Cantona, Cantona, Cantona because of my stylish play and ruggedness as a striker.

If I’m thinking of the person that I’m bearing his name, Cantona, anytime that I watched the way he played, it truly gingered me that one day I will play in Europe (Wale).

The third source of the centralisation of the athletic identity was the ethic of competition that dominates sport cultures in which the players were socialised, which guided their behaviours, attitudes and decision-making. The strong will to compete, to win, and to never give up, even at the cost of their well-being, dominated the athletes’ thought and decision-making process, exposing them to precarising experiences. This was most glaring in the insistence on playing with injury or refusing to be substituted in games despite suffering serious injury. This ethic of competition and its influence on health-related behaviour was aptly highlighted by the experience of Niyo who, despite a very serious concussion during a match, refused to be substituted, an injury that the impact resurfaced a decade later:

I sustained an injury in 2009 when we were playing a semifinal cup at the stadium. A shot hit my eyes. So, I played that semifinal with only one eye.

It was when I went to the hospital that the doctor said; ‘you are permitting something like this?’ They did some tests and said that the ball has hit my eye before. I said yes, because I remember everything. ‘Why did you remain in the game after such an injury?’ [the doctor queried]. Because I didn’t want my team to lose. I didn’t want to be substituted, so I completed the match with just the other eye. The Doctor said that that was the source of the problem I was suffering in the eye (Niyo).

This ethic of competition that disregards health and well-being is also related to the struggle to prove one’s physical toughness, a masculine trait associated with competitive football. It is also related to the need to impress and to remain visible to scouts in the highly competitive football talent market (Darby et al., 2022). This attitude towards wellbeing was further highlighted by the unhealthy and harsh conditions that some of the athletes endured at scouting camps in an effort to be visible in the labour market. Speaking about his experiences at a recruitment exercise, Osaro recounted:

So, all the other guys [fellow trialists] were so frustrated. They had to leave because of hunger. Because no food. Nobody gives you food. You have to find food for yourself. I was eating only beans for like two weeks. If I have the opportunity to cook beans, I go to one woman that sells fries beside the stadium. So, once she finished her store, I beg her; ‘please, I want to cook beans’. She will allow me. Then, I put it in my cooler. My cooler was my pillow, because I have to put it in my bag. I was sleeping in the stadium (Osaro).

Mayer and Thiel (2018) observed that playing with injury is a widespread phenomenon in competitive sports. They maintain that athletes who perceive more social pressure to compete hurt (e.g. pre-professional footballers), are more likely to trivialise pain or to be rest-averse. Furthermore, the centralisation of the athletic identity had other important consequences that undermined the athletes’ attempts at restoring coherence to their disrupted biographical sequence after their football pursuits. For some of the respondents, the athletic identity still loomed large after they had ended their struggle to get into professional football as players. This was manifested in efforts to hold onto the dream or remain employed in football or football related activities, even when it seemed improbable. For instance, despite having stopped playing for over three years, at 32, Niyo felt there could still be a chance to play professionally, but on the other hand, wishes to remain in the game as a coach and a football academy proprietor:

It has been long that I played football. I have not given up yet. Opportunity may still come.

If I can get some money in the future, I have plans to go for coaching school, but not here in Nigeria, maybe, abroad, so that when I come back to Nigeria, I will start my Academy (Niyo).

Brown and Potrac (2009) previously made a similar finding, noting that such an orientation is a sign of being ‘wedded to a self-conception situated in the past’, which ‘could lead to an individual’s sense of self remaining fragmented and his or her life being put on hold (p. 154). The findings of this paper show the importance of the athletic identity and its overbearing influence on young players. This coroborates the common thread in literature (e.g. Adler & Adler, 1991; Brown & Hartley, 1998; Brown & Potrac, 2009), which maintains that young players may unduely foreclose their self-identities within the narrow frames of sport in ways that may harm their holistic development, thereby exposing themselves to present and future precarity.

4.2. Disconnect between imagination and opportunity

The respondents’ narratives exposed a significant disconnect between their imagined sporting and biographical sequence and the real-life opportunities for realising their lofty ambitions. The respondents not only believed in the sufficiency of their sporting abilities to earn them a place in professional football or transnational migration, but also believed in the capacity of football in transforming their social and economic fortunes. This conviction was, however, incongruent with the capacities of the clubs and sporting social networks to which they were connected to deliver such promises. The faith in own ability and its potential for facilitating social and spatial mobility was expressed in clear terms by Adam, who when asked about what gave him the confidence that he would play in Europe, unequivocally responded, ‘my ability’. This faith in own ability is also related to the centralisation of the athletic identity. As shown in the preceding finding, the athletic identity may lead to inordinate faith in one’s talent and the opportunity for the realisation of its potentials. For many of the respondents, the transformational potentials of a career in football lay somewhere outside Nigeria, and achieving a professional move to Europe was a certain guarantee of lifetime prosperity:

Yeah, my goals were, you know, every kid growing up, let’s say you growing up in West Africa, Africa as a whole. You know, for greener pasture, to get to play in Europe, to play in big stadiums, to feel the crowd, play the World Cup, Champions League, to play the Premiership, explore. That’s it, and also to make big money, lots of money from there. Football is blood money. I call it blood money because, football, once you go out there, go to Europe, change the European currency to naira, you know, it is plenty cash in Nigeria. So, I do call it blood money; rivers of money, because it never ends if you manage it well. You know, living in poverty, living in this outskirt of the world, it was crazy. So, you want to go out, play, play for your passion, play for what you like, and still get paid and get out of the ghetto (Osaro).

The reference to ‘blood money’, a metaphor for inexplicable stupendous wealth replete in Nollywood (Nigerian movie industry) movie plots, is connected to what Ejekwumadu (2023b) referred to as the narrative of ‘blowing’; an optimism about social mobility through non-conventional occupations different from the traditional pathways accessible through schooling. On his part, Adam had no interest in, nor pursued, any opportunities of playing in the local professional league:

Up until date [the moment] I never imagined playing within Nigeria (Adam).

This is a display of a Eurocentric imagination of spatial and social mobility, where some of the respondents almost focused exclusively on achieving a transnational move to a European league. Ejekwumadu (2023a) found similar imaginations among aspiring youth footballers in Senegal. Such imaginations revealed a clear disconnect, not only with the capacity of the institutions and networks of amateur and semi-professional football, but also with the broader institutional contexts of international migration. In retrospect, Olu beamed light on the lack of capacity in many amateur and semi-professional clubs in dealing with immigration challenges:

Most academies and clubs don’t have sponsorship to take their players for trials or to get invitation for their players. Because most clubs, if you are not an international player, they don’t pay for your documentation, for your visas, for your flight to their club. You do the payment to go for trials with them. So, it’s difficult (Olu).

Expensive and discriminatory visa regimes pose significant challenges to African migrants generally (Agbor, 2021), and their mobility rights have stagnated or even diminished in the last couple of decades (Mau et al., 2015). Olu further substantiated these immigration barriers, while berating what he perceived as unfair and discriminatory attitudes toward Nigerian migrants:

The major issue is visa. I got invitations from Italy. I got from Spain. I got from Poland, but all denied visa.

The world shouldn’t see Nigeria or a Nigerian as a threat. Nigerians are one of the most decent people in the whole world… So, I think, maybe, they see every Nigerian, especially every young Nigerian, trying to go outside, even Christ [Jesus] wasn’t appreciated where he’s from. He had to go out to establish himself. So, I see no reason why talented Nigerians will want to leave a country that is limiting their abilities, their talents, and you are stopping them from doing that. It is very, very wrong… even the last one, about the Poland thing, it got me sober. I was like; I’m not a terrorist. I’m not going outside to run away. Nigeria is my home. I have family here. My life started here. So, you expect me to abandon where I started my life, where my family, everything, my origin is, and run away? Why will I run away? If I want to run away, I will not be coming to the embassy… there are different ways I can run away. So, why do you think me coming to the embassy, I want to take permission to run away from my country. It doesn’t make any sense. Why put an embassy in a country where you deny their people opportunities of going to achieve, to establish their talent, their skills. Doesn’t make any sense. I think we need to put this out here (Olu).

On the other hand, the lack of opportunities in the local league further undermines the chances of a professional career:

Like you are going for a screening in Nigeria here, you can see like thousands of people will come for that screening, and maybe, they are just looking for like five or six players to add to the team. I was there for like a month. People that we came together, they had all gone. So, I was so lucky. I was like among the five players to be picked, and yet, they didn’t sign me (Osaro).

The imagery painted by Osaro, brings to life, the class of ‘disposable people’ (Bales, 1999), who are desperate, plentiful and easily dispensable. Opportunities are even further diminished by the lifespan of amateur and semi-professional clubs. Given financial and other challenges, many tend to stagnate or fold up. This is because, in many cases, as found by this and other studies, amateur and semi-professional clubs are far too dependent on individual speculators who are hoping to cash out on football talent (Darby et al., 2022); or philanthropic organisations seeking to promote time-limited social goals (Dubinsky, 2022); or, as revealed by this study, are special purpose vehicles for politicians whose sponsorship is connected to the unreliable cycle of electoral politics and patronage. Dogo captured this when he narrated about how Lions FC spiralled from a fledgling, but thriving, semi-professional club in the lower divisions, to being disbanded just four years after the benefactor politicians were replaced:

We played in NLO [National League One] 2014, 2015 2016, 2017. Even in 2016, we used Karo United [a different name] because there were no sponsors… when it got to the year 2015, they disengaged those Local Government Chairmen [previous sponsors] and appointed another people… What we now do is that we just go to them, if you cannot get us money, okay, just give us your widow’s mite. Whatever you can do. That is the way we managed the thing to take it to 2017… when there was no sufficient fund, we could not continue with the team. We had to abandon and scrap the team just like that. There’s nothing we could do again. There was no money to run the affairs again. That was the end of Lions in Karo (Dogo).

The wide disparity between ‘imagined mobility’ (Ejekwumadu, 2023a), and capacity and opportunity to enact mobility, is what produces ‘involuntary immobility’ (Darby et al., 2022), a state of persistent inertia that precarises present and future livelihood. Such states of immobility may have such ‘pervasive consequences’ that Kalleberg (2009) highlighted about precarious work, effects of which permeate all facets of the individual’s life, from health and well-being to the inability to perform the milestones of adulthood, such as forming a family (Kalleberg & Vallas, 2017a) and fulfilling the obligations of intergenerational care (Darby et al., 2022).

4.3. Institutional failures

Institutions constitute the normative, material and regulatory structures that facilitate social interaction. Significant institutional failures that manifested in technical, infrastructural and regulatory capacity deficiencies were a common condition that generates precarious and precarising experiences for the players. The amateur and semi-professional football levels are blighted by significant deficiencies in capacity, whether in player development or in the handling of the challenges that are associated with participation in competitive football. The first manifestation of this situation is the lack of qualified coaches with the requisite training in modern methods of coaching. Player training involves a lot of improvisation. Dogo captured the gap in coaching capacity, highlighting not only the deficiencies in knowledge, but also the overwhelming work load and responsibilities borne by coaches at the amateur level:

You know, as many, many grassroots are not trained coaches. They will just have interest, gather players and train them with the level of their intelligence. That means that that kind of coach is not defined. The person will not know the rudiments or the ethic of coaching.

We do our own things roughly, locally and [inaudible]. The way we manage players is like in amateurish way. There’s nothing you can follow. You know when you don’t have money, you can’t provide the best. What your players need, you can’t get them. As I’m talking to you, being a coach, you are the head coach of your team in grassroots; you are the assistant; you are the curator; you are team manager; you are the welfare officer; you are the doctor of your team (Dogo).

As a result of deficiencies in the standard of training, many of the players at amateur clubs lack the quality required in a highly competitive talent market. For the majority, this limits the chances of being recruited by local professional clubs or by scouts working for overseas clubs.

Deficiencies in infrastructure represent another manifestation of institutional failures that impact on the players’ chances of success in getting into professional football. The respondents reported a dearth of infrastructure, especially training pitches. In many situations, the clubs train on improvised grounds or share facilities that they hardly have sufficient time for training. Olu clearly described the lack of infrastructure and the impact on players’ development:

Even the facilities are one of the things limiting a lot of talented players. When you don’t have good facilities, you will not develop at the rate at which you are supposed to develop… In a day you can have up to like 10 academies train within two hours. Between 6am and 8am, eight to ten academies. Just imagine sharing fields into four. What do they want to play? I know that sometimes you need some tactical training that involves the whole pitch. There are times you need smaller pitches that will help you with your decision making. So, a lot of things are happening. First, facilities are not there (Olu).

On the other hand, the respondents reported a widespread practice of non-payment of agreed remuneration in the semi-professional levels. Contracts signed between clubs and players may not be honoured by the clubs, or even concluded with the agreement (of the player) that such remuneration will not be fully paid (see also 4.4), but merely used to meet regulatory requirements:

Many of these clubs you are seeing, they’re not paying their players salary. They are only keeping them busy. I can just use that language. Okay, you see a professional team playing in the NLO, it should be a professional team. Anybody playing from NLO 3 should be in a professional team because they’re playing in the league. It’s a Nigerian league. They are the lowest. But… they are not paying them a salary (Dogo).

This corroborates Onwumechili and Akpan (2021) who reported player accounts of instances of disregard for contractual agreements among Nigerian clubs, a key feature of precarious work. Healthcare is another dimension where precarising institutional deficiencies manifest. Injury is prevalent in football in Nigeria (Azubuike & Okojie, 2009; Bello et al., 2020; Ibikunle et al., 2019) and knowledge of injury-prevention and management measures remain poor (Owoeye et al., 2013). Narratives of the respondents showed that many of the clubs at both the amateur and semi-professional levels lacked frameworks for managing the healthcare and well-being of players. This, in a number of cases, led to serious long-term injuries that some of the players continue to deal with after they terminated their football pursuits, and which continue to undermine their effort at re-establishing a stable adult life. Like Niyo earlier referenced, Wale suffered a serious injury to his right eye while playing for a semi-professional club, which was not treated and left his vision partially impaired:

Unfortunately, we went for an away match and I had an elbow cut here [pointing towards his right eye]. Before we finished the league, I noticed that the injury was really affecting me. Even when I’m looking at the ball towards me, I will think that the ball is before me, while it is like two metres from me. It caused me a lot of problems and I could not cope with it.

So, I made a step so that my career will not stop like that, but unfortunately for me, both local governments [owners of the club] did not respond to aid me. So, I moved to Celt Hospital. They directed me to the Teaching hospital, that it is a retinal detachment, that I need to do the surgery. At that time, they [Celt Hospital] said that they didn’t have the equipment for the surgery. They gave me a letter to Grand Hospital in Lagos. So, that’s how I was just roaming around 2010, 2011. Unfortunately for me, there was no money that I could use to do the surgery until the injury really affected me to the extent that the right eye couldn’t see much anymore (Wale).

The absence of a healthcare framework is a common feature of the amateur and semi-professional levels, and there is little regulatory enforcement for insurance coverage for the athletes. For instance, when asked if NLO clubs (semi-professional league) have health insurance coverage, Dogo replied, ‘they don’t have’. Further citing the club where he works presently as a coach (they play in the second division of the professional league), he said: ‘United as a state [government owned] team now doesn’t have insurance’. This institutional deficiency finds expression in another practice, the spiritualisation of injury and healthcare. Onyeka explains this:

Then it depended on the level of the injury you had. Every club has the level of injury they can manage. There is one that you will have and they would say, ‘go home and see if it’s spiritual’. Are you with me? So, the little one, within the reach of the club, they will do it, every club does it. In terms of where you have malaria, you are not fit to play, you have an ankle injury, you have little knee, which the clinic can treat, they can do it for you. All those ones they will do for you, but there are some spiritual injuries you have, the club management will ask you to go home and check by yourself and see (Onyeka).

Malinowski explained that the adoption of religious frames of meaning making in crisis situations is a response to a gap in knowledge and technology: ‘magic is to be expected and generally to be found whenever man comes to an unbridgeable gap, a hiatus in his knowledge or in his powers of practical control, and yet has to continue his pursuit’ (Malinowski, 1931, p. 638). Lacking the capacity to handle diagnosis and treatment, and coupled with prevailing religious and cultural beliefs, clubs and players may interpret their injury experiences within spiritual frames of meaning making. In this sense, injury is not just seen as a physiological experience, but a supernatural phenomenon that requires more than a medical solution. This ontological and epistemological shift, while offering players a meaningful construct for understanding and managing the threat to their imagined biographical narrative, may further compound their injury problems, and the required medical interventions may be delayed until such injuries become complicated or leave lasting impairments.

Studies on health seeking behaviour and healthcare practice in Nigeria show that the spiritualisation of illness and healthcare is a pervasive practice, where ailments may be interpreted as curses from deities, manipulations of some evil forces or divine punishment for some wrong doing (Obiwulu et al., 2020). For instance, Ohaja et al. (2019) examined religion and spirituality in pregnancy and birth in Nigeria and found that for many midwives and traditional birth attendants, there was a prevalence of the belief in and ‘reliance on the supreme God as the primary care provider’ (p. 7). Traditional birth attendants use of spirituality, they further explain, is based on the belief that ‘pregnant women are susceptible to spiritual attacks which may negatively affect the pregnancy, but can be prevented by offering spiritual care’ (p. 7). Such beliefs are a major cause of ‘delay in seeking prompt hospital-based care’ (Ohaja et al., 2019, p. 7). Delays in seeking conventional healthcare interventions may have precarious consequences, not least, for sport related injuries. The findings from Obiwulu et al. (2020) and Ohaja et al. (2019) resonate quite well with the findings of this study and provide additional context that may enhance our understanding of the spiritualisation of injury as a broader cultural practice that transcends sport.

Spiritualisation of injury brings a new dimension to our understanding of injury in Nigerian football. Previous studies have focused mostly on quantitative indicators such as prevalence, types and determinants of injuries (Azubuike & Okojie, 2009; Bello et al., 2020; Ibikunle et. al, 2019), but this finding highlights a new ontology and epistemology of injury, the cultural and institutional context in which it is experienced, the precarising impacts and the implications for the well-being of athletes. Furthermore, the institutional failures discussed in this paper highlight the precarities of operating at the margins of the GPN (Darby et al., 2022) of the football economy. Despite being outsourced (Kalleberg, 2009) the risky venture of developing cheap overseas talent, amateur and semi-professional football in Nigeria does not benefit significantly from the institutional capacity of the global football economy, be it the cutting-edge physical infrastructures or the medical capacities available to those operating in the metropolis of global football.

4.4. Corruption and exploitation

The respondents’ narratives were replete with experiences of corrupt and exploitative practices that are rife in the amateur and semi-professional levels. Desperate for opportunities to play in international competitions, achieve transnational migration, sign professional contract, or to remain visible to scouts and recruiters, many players forego agreed remuneration, are forced to pay significant bribes or get duped by fraudulent intermediaries. These experiences have significant consequences for the players’ chances of being selected in age grade international competitions or earning professional contracts at football clubs, and carry huge financial costs. Firstly, many players at the amateur and semi-professional levels in the past have leveraged on age grade international competitions to achieve international visibility and transnational mobility. Dubinsky (2022) has highlighted how international youth competitions are vital to the operations of football academies in Ghana. Many Nigerian internationals achieved their moves abroad after representing Nigeria at international youth tournaments. The struggle to be selected for youth competitions (Under-17 and Under-20) is one some of the respondents reported experiences of nepotism:

They were preparing for the World Cup, that’s the Under-20 World Cup. I was in the camp with them, but the treatment they always give people that come from outside, like, definitely, you know coaches, they have their players. So, when they see good players coming to take the position of their players, it becomes a threat. They become a threat to their players and when people who are outside watching say that this player is good for the national team, and at the end, they didn’t see such players. That’s why most times they stopped camera in trainings, so that people will not get to see. Okay, these players were very good in the preparation for the World Cup, why didn’t you use them? (Olu).

Some of the respondents also decried corrupt practices within local professional clubs (many of which are owned by subnational governments) which cost them opportunities to sign professional contracts. This was well captured by Olu, who was asked to agree that part of his remuneration would be paid to an unnamed person before he would be given a contract at a state-owned professional club:

There was a time I got an invitation from Zen FC to play… And they told me that they will sign me to receive 250,000 naira monthly, but what I’ll get will be 150,000. There are some people that will take 100,000 of my salary… I know, sometimes players can be desperate just to, but I understand that, okay with time, the visibility is all that is needed (Olu).

In other situations, bribes may be demanded before a player is offered a contract. Niyo recounted his experience when someone referred him for a trial at a state-owned professional club:

During the trial, they called him and said; ‘we like these two guys you sent to us, but if you want them to get signed, there are some things that you must follow’. So, they took us to one office that, if you want to make the list, you have to pay this amount (Niyo).

Corruption and exploitation may also manifest in the fraudulent activities of duplicitous intermediaries who prey on players’ desperation and lack of information. Players may be charged exorbitant fees for fake overseas trials or to process visas that are for a different immigration purpose. Olu narrated his experience with a trial invitation to Germany:

They dupe a lot of players that are so eager to… There was a time I got invited to Germany. This man sent us an invite. So, he said we pay, let’s say, equivalent of 1 million naira, which we did… So, now we’ve got to the embassy, the embassy said there are a lot of things we need to do for us to go, that we should talk to the man over there. When the things were just dragging, okay, send us back the money they collected from us. According to my manager, the man refused to send back the money (Olu).

Osaro decried rampant cases of fraudulent travel documents procured by intermediaries:

They were supposed to go to play football in that country. On getting there, they even didn’t let them see anyone or even go out of the airport. They had to return back to Nigeria… Because the travel documents were not genuine (Osaro).

To put the significance of the financial losses incurred through such experiences in a better context, at the time Olu was defrauded a million naira, what he lost was equivalent to a cumulative income of four and a half years for a worker in a fulltime minimum wage employment (18 thousand naira per month at the time). Such financial loses further undermined the athletes’ effort at establishing alternative livelihood at the end of their football pursuit. While Darby et al. (2022) have highlighted similar experiences of fraudulent practices of intermediaries in Ghanaian football with regards to visas and overseas trials, this current study further shows that corrupt and fraudulent practices extend to the signing of players and playing contracts at local clubs. These fruadulent experiences may deprive the athletes and their families, who may invest to support the players’ football and migration effort (Darby et al., 2022; Van der Meij et al., 2017), valuable resources for establishing a more secure collective sustainable livelihood. In this sense, precarity may extend to entire households, since, as Van der Meij et al. (2017, p. 186) argue, the effort to migrate through football is not an ‘individual act but rather should be considered as part of a broader household livelihood strategy that seeks to diversify income streams and spread risk across the household’.

5. Conclusion

This paper investigated how the experiences of precarity are produced in amateur and semi-professional football in Nigeria. The findings showed that precarity emanates from the structural conditions and processes of the football and wider economy, as well as the actions of athletes as agents located within that social context. This happens through an overbearing athletic identity, a disconnect between imagined mobility through football and actual opportunity, institutional failures, and corruption and exploitation. The findings sit well with literature and theory, especially the importance of the athletic identity and the role of the broader economy in the precarisation of football careers. While previous literature recounted the precarity that pre-professional African footballers experience, this paper added to our knowledge by properly articulating how such experiences are produced. It achieved this by showing how specific meaningful experiences are connected in meaningful ways at the abstract and conceptual levels of broader conditions, practices and behaviours in amateur and semi-professional football.

The findings point to the need for a framework for a dual career and life after football programme in amateur and semi-professional clubs centred around information, health education and skills training, as well as institutional and regulatory reforms for better governance of the sector. The overbearing athletic identity may be downplayed by encouraging clubs to support their players to develop alternative skills that would enhance transitions out of the game. Such may be achieved through vocational training alongside football development. Regulatory bodies (e.g. the league organisation) may also include in guidelines for participation, regular health information training for clubs and players, mandatory insurance coverage for players, and acceptable minimum infrastructural and staffing standards for clubs, etc.

This paper has some limitations. There is still need to examine the way that precarity is lived by former youth athletes after their football pursuit and the process through which those who fail to achieve a professional status restore coherence to their disrupted biographies. Subsequent papers may address these gaps.

Acknowledgement

I would like to thank the respondents who participated in this study. I reserve special thanks for Yusuf Sikiru Abiona and Bem Jeffrey Buter for their invaluable assistance in the field.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This study was funded by the postdoctoral fellowship of the Fritz Thyssen Foundation [40.22.0.023SO].