Youth, Football and Everyday Lived Experience in Ajegunle, Lagos

ABSTRACT This article presents in-depth insights into how soccer is helping some of the youths in Ajegunle – Nigeria’s most notorious slum – to defy the odds in their day-to-day lived experiences. Through an ethnography informed by personal and in-depth knowledge of the area, I demonstrate how football has become an important social tool for many youths in terms of social inclusion, capital, and identity formation, as well as serving as a beacon of hope for the most vulnerable. Contrary to popular expressions in existing scholarship on the Nigerian slum life, portraying slum-marked areas as dens of juvenile delinquency and negative social attributes, I show that community-based soccer clubs (despite the absence of government interventions) are helping many young people to navigate the hurdles of slum life through a more-positive medium. I argue that soccer in Ajegunle plays a multidimensional role in the lives of young people, especially in the area of social inclusion and re-engineering, as well as a social mechanism for personal development, identity and capital formation.