Emma Okonji
Winners have emerged in the ongoing Mobgidi Lottery games, with some of them winning as much as one million naira cash prize.
The winners who spoke while receiving their cash prizes in Lagos at the weekend, said although they were initially skeptical about participating in the mobile phone gaming on the MTN platform, for fear of being swindled by fraudsters, they however said they somehow summoned courage to play the game as the network operator kept pushing the game on their mobile devices.
Some of the winners who were on ground to receive their cash prizes, included: Akpanile Olufemi who won N25,000; Nwabufor Austin, who won N50,000; Julius Oderanti who also won N50,000 cash; Oke Oluwafemi who won N100,000 cash; Jenifer Oluchi who won N500,000; and Benjamin Mogo who won N1 million cash.
The cash prizes were presented to the winners by the Executive Director, Starfish Mobile, the operator of Mobgidi Lotto, Mr. Banky Ojutalayo.
Giving details of the lottery game, Ojutalayo said the company had been in the mobile value added service (VAS) business for close to 10 years and had since then became, one of the foremost VAS operators in Nigeria.
According to him, “We considered several factors before coming up with Mobgidi Lottery games, which is the first mobile gaming service in Nigeria. We looked at the economic environment, where liquidity flow is low and people are struggling to make ends meet, and we decided to introduce the Mobgidi Lottery to help Nigerians win good money with ease. In Mobgidi Lottery, every player is a winner.”
Addressing the issue of trust in participating in the Mobgidi Lottery games, as raised by the winners, Ojutalayo said convincing people to trust in your service offering was a very big challenge for anyone, because people hardly trust one another, especially when it comes to business of naira and kobo. He however said that his company decided to build its business on trust would continue to be transparent and provide enough information for Nigerians to truly trust the Mobgidi Lottery games.
“We are launching a marketing campaign with lots of ads, designed to build credibility around the brand. Till date, several Nigerians have won cash prizes at various levels and we present the cash award after every draw that produces winners. The prize range is from N5,000 to N1 million and we have been giving out cash prizes to several winners. So far over two million people have played Mobgidi Lottery games and the number keeps increasing and winners keep emerging,” Ojutalayo said.
“Mobgidi is currently running on the MTN network because they were the first to accept our proposal, which we equally sent to other network operators, but we are willing to extend the gaming service to other networks, as soon as they are ready to sign agreement with Mobgidi Lottery games.
Aside the offline platform through the mobile phone device, we have also created the online platform where people can also log on to the internet to play the Mobgidi Lottery game, but we have since discovered that Nigerians preferred the offline platform, using their mobile device to play the Mobgidi Lottery game,” Ojutalayo added.
Giving insight on how to play the game, Ojutalayo said: “Mobgidi comes in different categories of games. We have the Lucky Seven Game, which comes in various forms like the Lucky Seven Daily, and it is N30 per day. We also have the Lucky Seven Weekly, and it is N50 per week and people are entitled to one draw per week. We also have the Lucky Seven VIP, and it is N100 per day.
“So the number of players for a particular category of game, determines the volume of cash to be won. As the players increase, the amount to be won also increases. So 50 per cent of the entire money generated from each category of game, forms the volume of cash to be rewarded to winners in that category, he said.
He further explained that Mobgidi has a range of technology partners among which is Huawei, even though the technology driving the Mobgidi Lottery game was locally developed. “So the Mobgidi platform rides on the platform of the mobile integration that Hiawei has with network operators,” Ojutalayo said.
