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APRIL 9, 2007 VOL. 20. NO 26

Lottery of Doom

**Governor Bola Ahmed Tinubu of Lagos State**

With the pulling out of Oceanic Bank International Plc, a major investor, Lagos Lottery goes under
By Udo Onyeka
IT came to the limelight all of a sudden, through a massive and aggressive publicity campaign such that is almost immediately became the most visible lottery in the country. It was as if things were fritted to fall in the right places for it. But all that now seem to be history as the famed Lagos Lottery has closed shop, shutting out its agents and customers without pre-information of any kind regarding what was amiss.
The Source gathered that a major investor in the Lagos Lottery project, recently Oceanic Bank International plc, pulled out and as a result the centre could no longer hold at the lottery company.
In pulling out, Oceanic which reported lost about one billion naira invested in the company sacked the company from all its properties that housed the operations of the lottery firm. One of these was the former head office of the company, on Awolowo Road, Ikoyi. Apart from this, the management of the bank has recalled all its staffers seconded to the various offices of the Lagos Lottery, indicating that the bank may have permanently severed its business relationship with the company.
The bank had entered into a business agreement with Orion Technologies, a South Africa firm that got the contract to operate the Lagos Lottery. Part of the agreement it was gathered, was that some senior staffers of Oceanic bank would form part of Orion’s senior management team – a strategy by the bank to enable it have an eye over its huge financial investment in the project. It is based on this arrangement that Obaro Ibru, an executive director and son of the matriach of Oceanic Bank, Cecilia Ibru, became the Chief Marketing Officer of Orion Technologies.
Investigations revealed that Lagos Lottery, now without a befitting office after it was ejected from its former headquarter on Awolowo Road, Ikoyi (which has been penciled down by Oceanic as a branch of the bank) is finding it difficult to get another sponsor.
Apart from the present predicament, Lagos Lottery immediately it was handed over to Orion Technologies by the Lagos State Government in 2007 faced a similar problems as there was a litigation between the federal and Lagos State government, over who controls lottery activities in the state. This dispute was to delay the take-off of the Lagos Lottery by Orion Technologies until 2005 when it eventually took off.
Controversy had tailed the establishment of the Lagos Lottery as the federal and Lagos State Governments claimed legal authority over who issued licences to operators of lottery business in Lagos.
In a bid to stop the operator of Lotto Nigeria, managed by the National Sports Lotteries Limited and backed by the Federal Government in the state, Dele Alake, Lagos State Commissioner for Information and Strategy issued a press statement against operators that were not licensed by the state government.
“No person, individual, corporate organisation etc, shall operate a lottery in Lagos State unless it has been issued a license under the Lagos State Lottery Law 2004.
“Any retailer, distributor, shop keeper, independent contractor or agent, by any name whatsoever that has intention to sell and does sell lottery tickets to the general public in Lagos State shall be guilty of a criminal offence under sections 240 of the criminal code law cap C. 17 laws of the state 2004.”
The Lagos challenge came on the heels of the sale of play tickets of Lotto Nigeria, which commenced simultaneously in seven major cities across the country. The city of Lagos was scheduled to be part of this initial launch but for the opposition mounted by the Lagos State Government.
Notably, the efforts of the Federal Government to stop Lagos State from making separate laws governing lotteries failed as the Supreme Court, the nation’s highest judicial authority, in March 2005 struck out the suit after the Federal Government made a u-turn in its case.
The case which was filed against the Lagos State Lotteries Law sought to regulate national lotteries in the state.
The state in the law, prescribed that only the Lagos State Lottery Board could grant licences to persons who would carry out lottery activities in the state.
Considering the support given to the Lagos Lottery project by the state government under the leadership of Bola Ahmed Tinubu and Oceanic Bank under Ibru, many was convinced that the company would break even after two years in business.
But contrary to such expectations, the Lagos Lottery experienced dwindling patronage and acceptability, inspite of tremendous public awareness created by its initial public relations consultants, TPT.
A source close to the company told The Source that Lagos Lottery ran into public problem when the publicity campaign of the company was taken off TPT in 2006 after the company began to find it difficult to release money for public relations.
The Source was told that one of the major reasons for the collapse of Lagos Lottery, however, was the demise of Humphrey Khoza, the visioner and chief executive officer of Orion Technologies. Apart from the above, another reason was the fixing of N150 as the price of the ticket of fortune.
The pegging of ticket price at N150, analysts say, turned out to be a fatal miscalculation against the backdrop of the fact that other competitors sold their tickets at low prices. For instance, Face-to-Face pools, popularly called Baba Ijebu, which has behind it billionaire businessman, Kessington Adebutu, sell its ticket at N20, while Lotto Nigeria, with Nigeria Sports Lottery as operator sells at N50.
The Source, was told that the expensive campaign employed and huge differential in price seriously affected the fortunes of the company, coupled with the vacuum created by the death of Khoza, with no one available to efficiently fit into his shoes, dealt a terrible blow on the lottery company.
Investigations revealed that agents of the company are all in the dark regarding what is going on. An agent of the company in Ikeja told The Source that he was surprised that the company all of a sudden closed shop without informing its “teeming agents and customers. Since December 2006, we have not heard anything from them. I visited their head office on Awolowo Road, Ikoyi in February 2007, and I was told that they were no longer using the office.”
The Source also gathered that Orion, operators of the Lagos Lottery has moved its head office to Ojuelegba in Lagos Mainland, but on getting to the building, though with a Lagos Lottery signpost, no one in the building close to the popular Ojuelegba bus stop could say anything about the Lottery company.
According to a source at Oceanic it was when the company requested for more money that the bank realised that all the funds it put into the lottery project may have gone down the drain.
“The request shocked the management of the bank, which after putting in so much money that should be able to put the company on a firm footing still had nothing to show for it, but requests for further funding. Of course, that was outrightly rejected”, the source stated. Yet there was nothing to show for it.”
The Source learnt that sensing that there was no more money to continue the business, many of the lottery’s brand ambassadors should decided to hold unto the company’s assets in their possession such as vehicles, pending when the company would redeem all its debts and outstanding salaries owed to some of its consultants and ambassadors.