EFCC moves to sanitise lottery operations

A milestone was, on Tuesday, recorded in the effort to sanitise lottery operations in the country as the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) announced it has teamed-up with the National Lottery Regulatory Commission (NLRC) to prosecute all  illegal lottery operators.
The announcement was a follow-up to  a  Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), signed between both commissions a year ago, anchored on the need to cooperate and collaborate for an effective implementation of the National Lottery Act.
Both the chairman of the anti-graft agency, Ibrahim Magu and the Director-General of NLRC, Adolphus Joe Ekpe, held a joint press conference, where they announced the partnership to sanitise the industry.
At the briefing, Magu stated that his commission fully support the lottery commission’s efforts to sanitise the sector and warned that it will no longer be business as usual for fraudulent players in the sector.
“Let me re-affirm the commitment of the EFCC to  team -up  with the NLRC to ensure that our MoU is vigorously implemented,” he said.
The EFCC boss called on all lottery industry stakeholders to show more patriotism by playing lottery the right way as well as on all those involved in illegal lottery business to approach the lottery commission so as to regularise their operations.
He said that since licensed lottery operators have been told to certify their agents and sub- agents and to migrate willingly to the NLRC’s newly-developed SMS Transactions Monitoring and Archival Platform (STRAMAP), anyone caught  contravening the law will not be spared.
Magu  said that since the MoU was signed, the EFCC has taken steps to enhance the capacity of the lottery commission to discharge its responsibility, including training programmes for its officials at the EFCC Academy in Karu ,as well as placing its investigative resources at the disposal of the commission.
He said the anti-graft agency took the steps in realisation of the challenges which quacks and saboteurs in the sector pose to the country’s economy.
 Also speaking,  the NLRC boss,  insisted that his commission, together with the EFCC and other law enforcement agencies will not  allow  the lottery industry being over-run by illegal operators.
He said that as a major step in riding the industry of illegal operators and to strengthen its regulatory functions, the NLRC had already  developed an action plan for the development of the sector to ensure transparency and  accountability  as required by the law.