By Andy Asemota
Nigeria is losing hundreds of billions of naira it should be generating from lottery proceeds annually, the Senate has said.

Senator Peter Nwaoboshi, (Delta North, PDP), disclosed this in his motion for an investigation into non-execution of terms of settlement between the Nigerian Lottery Regulatory Commission (NLRC) and one of the lottery firms, Ghana Games in Nigeria.

Nwaoboshi noted that Nigeria, despite its 200 million population, was reportedly generating about two billion annually from lottery proceeds, while Burkina Faso with a population of 20 million was generating about N562 billion annually and Ivory Coast with a population of 25 million was generating about N312 billion annually, among other sub-Saharan countries earning much high revenue than Nigeria from lottery proceeds.

He further noted that lottery in Nigeria had the potential to increase the county’s revenue base from the 1557.7 billion dollar global lottery market based on a study which indicated that Nigerians spent over two billion naira on sports betting daily and about 2.2 billion dollars per annum.

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The senator expressed concern that statutory remittances by most lottery operators in the country remained extremely poor and not reflective of the actual sales generated by operators because a proposed terms settlement, approved by the Governing Board of NLRC, has not been executed.

To forestall the loss of the lottery revenue, the Upper Chamber, presided over by the Senate President, Ahmad Lawan, mandated the Senate Committee on Sports to investigate the alleged non-execution of the settlement and report back within four weeks.

The Senate, Lawan observed, was also alarmed that despite the ministerial directive to the lottery commission to execute the settlement within seven working days, nothing had been done.