MONDAYBUSINESS

Would you say the lottery commission has lived up to its mandate?

The National Lottery Regulatory Commission is a child parented by the National Lottery Act 2005. In Section 7 of that act, the functions are spelt out - basically to regulate lottery in Nigeria, set standards and guidelines for regulation, promote transparency and accountability, carry out periodic assessment of lottery and ensure the interests of all stakeholders are protected.

The Lottery Commission didn’t take place immediately. It was about 2006 that the operations started from the office of the AGF. In 2000, the rules and regulations to guide lottery operations were developed. So far, we have licensed 20 operators and it’s a national license. The main lotteries are basically games of numbers (fixed odds) - the traditional lottery business like what Premier Lotto is doing. But there are other lotteries that are tied to products and services. For instance, your bank could say, deposit N50,000 in your account and leave it for at least two months and stand a chance to win a car. Here the traditional banking transaction has been put in a promotional context because of the price to be won, thus the need for regulation.

For the promotional lotteries, charges are based on what they are giving out as price, but in traditional lotteries, 20 percent of the profit should be remitted to the Trust Fund, 50 percent should go for the prize money, and the balance of 30 percent should be for the operator. We have equally developed rules for supervision. When we go for assessment, we look at your accounting records; IT and we look at your administrative procedures.

Your number goals is to be the highest revenue earning agency in Nigeria. How much is generated and what are your projections going forward?

From inception date, the lottery commission has been able to remit more than N6 billion to government and remittances started in 2007. There are challenges that are impeding the commission from realising the highest revenue generating agency in Nigeria. Why do we say the Commission can be highest revenue generating agency? It is because of the huge population in Nigeria. Lottery is tied to virtually all products and services and Nigeria has the market. So the potentials’ are there. What are the challenges? We should be able to have credible and capable operators who are transparent. We don’t even have someone ready to to do a national lottery. We were working with one of the newly licensed operators to do a national lottery but they had a challenge, their equipment was gutted by fire. We were to start a national draw by the end of March, 2017. Again, some of the operators are not transparent, the trust from Nigerians is not there. Most of them don’t even have the financial capability to do national draws so they are just doing it in piecemeal. More importantly, the Lottery Commission doesn’t have the technology to monitor even the existing ones. We are still working on our IT infrastructure to be able to monitor what every operator is doing. Beyond all these, we need a conducive environment for both the operators and the regulator. There are some litigations; The state governments are challenging us including Lagos State. That all those who have license in their state, we shouldn’t control them. We have just set up a committee to harmonize the issues. Before now, when we clampdown on their operators, they clampdown on ours. Some operators where not even remitting to anybody because of the confusion. For the lottery commission, we need capacity building which is why we are requesting for money to train. We need to have synergy with other bodies like the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) because we lack the resources to carry out some enforcements. We want to enter into an MoU with the EFCC and they are willing to work with us. We have even gone ahead with the EFCC to come up with a gazette of lottery where operators will mandatorily report their activities to both the commission and the EFCC. There will be a public enlightenment on that. We need to also form alliance with other agencies like the NCC on the several promos on telcos. We are also looking at working with the CBN to check illegal operators so their accounts can be blocked. We are also looking at working with NIITDA for those using the internet. We are trying to put our own IT monitoring in place but the process is under litigation from Egames and System Numeric. We are also trying to set up our own inhouse processes on automation.

Still on revenue, how much do you generate annually visà-vis your projection that the commission could make as much as N250 billion revenue annually?

Revenue from lottery could be viewed from different perspectives. If you play a lottery for N100, it will be split into several components. The component that goes for the prize (50 percent), the component that goes to the Trust Fund which is (20 percent) and the component that goes to the operator (30 percent). In 2016, we generated over N800 million to the Trust Fund. It is quite small considering our potentials but the challenges earlier enumerated are responsible for the low revenue. Premier Lotto, for instance, is paying a flat rate of N500 million annually because we have not yet automated our monitoring system. Our inability to monitor operators’ online, real time, is reducing our revenue. However, when you compare what comes to government and add the 50 percent prize sum and 30 percent of the operators, the revenue is quite significant. Coming to hitting the N250 billion annually, with full automation and with credible operators, we will even surpass that.

The National Assembly during your budget defence, raised concerns of nonremittance to the Trust Fund, what’s the procedure?

Remittance to the Trust Fund is done directly through the commission because we are the regulator. The money doesn’t come to our account. For lottery Commission, we have the application fee, the permit fee, admin fee and the advert fee which will give you a total of what we earn. The payment for the license is once. When the monies are being paid, they are clearly indicated. So somebody can’t say, we have not remitted Trust Fund’s money. We also collect annually a subscription fee which is N2 million.

How is the 20 percent paid to the Trust Fund spent?

The 20 percent remittance to the Trust Fund is spent according to Section 40 of the Act. The section recommends that the funds be used for the execution of good causes and to fund projects approved by the president on the recommendations of the board of trustees in the interest of Nigerian communities. Such projects shall include but not limited to projects in the advancement, upliftment and promotion of sports development, education, social services, public welfare and the relief and management of natural disasters. However, the Trust Fund can also use it for the administration of the Trust Fund.

Are there good causes that the funds have been applied on?

How many schools selected in each state? are

Depending on the size of the state and the number of local governments. Every local government should have at least one. The Trust Fund has the details, we haven’t gotten the full details.

Is there a time frame where every state should benefit?

It is supposed to have been completed. It is just the logistics that have been delaying it.