Nigeria’s Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) has partnered with the National Lottery Trust Fund (NLTF) to tackle corruption in the lottery industry.
In a statement on the EFCC’s website, Executive Chairman Abdulrasheed Bawa declared the partnership during a visit by Dr Bello Maigari, Executive Secretary of NLTF, to the Commission’s headquarters in Abuja.
The statement noted that Maigari has called on the EFCC to play a role in the recovery of statutory remittances due to the industry. He criticised the relaxed attitude of licensed lottery and gaming companies in meeting their government obligations which he says has ‘put intervention programmes of the Trust Fund at risk’.
He has also asked the EFCC to help recover the huge lottery and gaming revenues illegally held by Value Added Services operators.
Maigari said that the NLTF “will do everything humanly possible to safeguard lottery as a national asset and will continue to support the work of the EFCC to achieve success for the good of the nation”.
NLTF’s Executive Secretary also requested the EFCC to install a desk to help address some of the hurdles confronting industry stakeholders.
In his response, Bawa commented on the EFCC’s resolve to work with relevant stakeholders to recover revenue due to the industry.
He said: “Some of the issues you raised I must say that they are very worrisome; the EFCC has never shied away from doing our work, most especially when it comes to economic crimes, we will try as much as we can to work with major stakeholders to address those issues.
“When we came onboard, this was one of the first things that we actually looked at, lottery and tax; and we have a team that actually deal with that. Recently we designated an officer who handles this kind of issue, and presently we are doing a review of some of those cases.”
Bawa stated that apart from looking at revenue losses, the EFCC is also not unmindful of the fact that lottery components are being used as avenues for money laundering; so, we are looking at the criminality aspect.
He added: “We are willing to expand our desk office to three or four people, because it is our mandate, we are not shying away from doing these things.”
