The recent intervention of top online digital lotto operators, KGL, has prevented what could have resulted in a major financial crisis for the state owned gaming giant, the National Lottery Authority (NLA).
With morale among staff now restored and kitty of the gaming company replenished through the KGL intervention, the NLA has doffed its hat for KGL, operators of the *959# online short code.
A statement by the NLA Public Affairs Unit said the intervention could not have been possible but for the partnership between KGL and the NLA which it described as hinged upon a solid working relationship.
The release explained that the authority suffered its fate largely because of high winning ratios over a long period which it said exceeded the sales/revenue generated.
It was this, it added, which generated the considerable liquidity challenge encountered by the authority, saying “the life-saving intervention by KGL the NLA acknowledged under the dire circumstances resolved the foregoing.”
Also acknowledged in the NLA release is KGL’s game-changing full digitization programme of the authority.
The NLA dismissed as untrue, claims about a so-called positive balance in the authority’s revenue against the backdrop of the KGL bailout.
The analysis contained in the reports, it said, ignored realities such as payment to lotto marketing companies over the past six years including the payment of fees to the technical service providers over the same period.
Statutory payments to the consolidated fund in the past years, not forgetting remuneration and other allowances to staff, were also not factored in the analysis, the NLA observed.
The gaming giant has assured “the general public and stakeholders that it is taking more pragmatic steps to address all current challenges and bounce back stronger as the leading lottery regulator and operator in Africa.”
By A.R. Gomda