THE NATIONAL LOTTERY TRUST FUND – THE WAY FORWARD
The three-day capacity building initiative enabled the National Lottery Trust Fund Team to gain valuable insights into new perspectives, policies and strategies currently shaping the growth and development of national lotteries world-wide. The programme exposed participants to best practices that have made the UK lottery market a reference point around the globe for high returns to good causes and lottery duties to government.
In order to entrench the rich experience of this visit for significant improvement of the lottery sector in Nigeria, it is highly recommended that:
Follow-up contacts should be maintained to ensure that the memoranda of understanding delivered respectively by the NLC to the UK Lottery Commission and by the NLTF to Big Lottery Fund, are endorsed and implemented. This would ensure the necessary technical support for the growth of the Nigerian industry.
The multi-license structure being practiced in Nigeria should be maintained and the tenure of licensees should be reviewed periodically to reflect their performance in the industry. Although, Jackpot prizes increase the appeal of lottery where the market is covered by one licensee, this can also be easily achieved under a market environment with multitude of licensees.
The licensing procedure should also be reviewed to ensure that the most capable operators, who meet set standards for propriety, player protection, financial capability, technology, risk management, high returns, etc, are licensed through a transparent and competitive bidding process.
The long-standing effort to amend the National Lottery Act 2005 in order to further strengthen the NLC and NLTF in the performance of their mandates should be fast-tracked.
Arrangements to establish appropriate technological infrastructure for monitoring the activities of licensees, also need to be fast-tracked, to safeguard the integrity of the transactions and protect Government revenue due from the industry. There may be need, in this regard, for a follow-up visit to the UK Lottery Commission to understudy the third party infrastructure/facilities being employed by the Commission for this purpose.
The NLC and NLTF should organize stakeholder discussions to produce a road map for the re-organization of the industry in line with international practices.
