Bello Maigari: National Lottery Trust Fund Is Making Impact in Nigeria Though Not Well-known

Executive Secretary of the National Lottery Trust Fund, Dr. Bello Maigari, holds an expository dialogue with Nseobong Okon-Ekong to spell out the shape of work and processes carried out by the agency

Can you explain what you do at the National Lottery Trust Fund?

We are established by an Act of the National Assembly, essentially to take custody of a certain percentage of the proceeds of all the gaming and lottery activities in the country and to apply these proceeds to the promotion of good causes. These good causes cover areas like education, health, social services, relief and disaster. This mandate is very broad, and of course, the law did not just limit us to these areas. If funding is available, we can intervene in infrastructure, that is, small-scale housing, rural feeder roads, and culverts linking communities together. If you visit our communities, some of these infrastructures are lacking. The fund is essentially established to be like the last mile to see how we can extend the budget of the federation. 

How do you determine the areas where you make these interventions?

We have developed a policy and a strategy for that and this is to do with the compilation of the needs of the entire country in the areas I mentioned earlier; that is, health, water, sanitation, relief management and basic infrastructure- it’s all-encompassing. We do this through a survey, through what we call a bottom-up approach. We engage all our field officers who are located in the six geopolitical zones to interface with communities in villages and local governments to harvest these needs and confirm these needs through the state governments. If it is health, we meet the state ministry of health. If it is education, we visit the state ministry of education and confirm those needs and bring these needs to our headquarters in Abuja, where we sit down, analyse them and put them in a database. This database is structured into a programme. When the board sits, it decides what area we are going to intervene in. It decides the sector. We fast-track it to the ministry for approval and subsequently to the Federal Executive Council. Once approval is granted, we come back to implement the project.

Your request goes all the way to the Federal Executive Council?

The request goes through the agency to the ministry and sometimes the Federal Executive Council. That depends on the size of the project. There are thresholds. If the approval is within the limit of the honourable minister for special duties and inter-governmental affairs, who is now responsible for supervising our agency, he will grant those approvals and send them down to the agency for implementation, but if it is beyond ministerial approval threshold, the request has to go to FEC through a memorandum that we have to write which will be presented at the Federal Executive Council.

During your tenure, can you give us specific areas in Nigeria where you have made interventions and what were those?

On my assumption of office as the chief executive of the agency, sometime in February 2019, we sat down along with my able management team to design a policy framework that guides the implementation of intervention projects in all the sectors that I have mentioned- that is in sports, health, water, education and emergency relief and humanitarian aid, disaster management and mitigation. This policy framework guides the agency in carrying out its intervention programmes in all the six geopolitical zones. The framework requires that all interventions should be driven through a two-pronged approach. We carry out these interventions through a targeted approach or through a generic approach. The targeted approach is one single effort that the agency normally does by first going directly into an area where we have received a request for an urgent intervention. 

Such intervention may be in the area of disaster management or mitigation. If there is a flood, for instance, in the community or if there is a fire disaster. Or, if there is this issue of Boko Haram or banditry or anything that requires humanitarian aid, we quickly intervene directly to bring succour to our people. Otherwise, we sit down to design a generic programme for which we receive applications on a daily basis, which we analyse and put together as a programme so that we implement it in all the six geopolitical zones. We do this to ensure that we have a targeted outcome. An outcome where Nigerians will feel the impact of the fund. Of course, over time, we are able to intervene in health. We looked at the health infrastructure of this nation and discovered that a larger part of it has been lacking in vital medical facilities and equipment. We know for a fact that when you visit the Primary Health Care Centres, the first thing that you need is to conduct some diagnosis to determine the nature of your ailment. Some of these systems and vital facilities are lacking and that is the area we intervened in almost 80 PHCs across the country. We have also intervened in tertiary health institutions, such as Federal Medical Centres in state capitals and the FCT. Some of these interventions have attracted a lot of honours and awards. Recently, the agency was given a gold rating award in service delivery, which is the first in the history of the agency, and this is to tell you that the National Lottery Trust Fund has been repositioned and it is working for the promotion of lottery good causes as required by the law that established it.

What percentage of the money generated from lottery activities is required by law to go to NLTF?

The enabling legislation determines that, at least, that is in line with the 2005 National Lottery Act, about 20 per cent should be remitted to the National Lottery Trust Fund, but over time the act was repealed. We now have the National Lottery Act 2017, where the percentage has been eroded to 7.5 per cent, and recently, there was a new regulation issued by the National Lottery Regulatory Commission that two per cent be remitted to the National Lottery Trust Fund, while the National Lottery Regulatory Commission retains one per cent.

What would you describe as good causes?

Good causes are projects meant to promote social inclusion for all Nigerians. These projects cut across health, education, social services, welfare, relief and disaster management. Good causes are meant to bring support to needy Nigerians. We have to target the poorest of the poor who are vulnerable and require the support of the National Lottery Trust Fund to make life better for them. This is why this current administration, led by President Bola Tinubu through the Renewed Hope Agenda, has directed the agency to work on specific special interventions for women and children. The reason for that is to see how we can grow our economy around our women and our youths, who, of course, remain the most vulnerable and who are the least employed in our job market. If you empower women, they are likely going to empower our nation through resilience and through some of the businesses that they do on a daily basis. If you loan money to a woman, she is likely going to multiply it and make it bigger. That will also enhance the welfare of that family, and eventually, the nation will grow from it. The same thing if you empower a youth; they are the engine room of growth of any economy in the world. They constitute the largest demography in our population. If you empower them through scholarships, loans and capital, they are going to drive and re-energise the economy of this nation. We are going to actualise some of these initiatives.

What are you doing to make the agency better known?

This is an area that we are working on, and there is a need for public awareness. You need to raise awareness around some of the activities that we do in this agency. I have highlighted some of the projects that we have undertaken in health, education, and sports. But we also see the need for awareness and enlightenment. Nigerians, largely, do not know about the existence of this agency. Going forward, I can assure you that we are going to address the issue. We are going to engage with the media. We are going to design programmes around the activities of the NLTF to ensure that Nigerians get to know what they do. We also continue to monitor the progress of this organisation and the impact of our projects in our respective communities.

Can you tell us the volume of the last fund that came into the purse of the NLTF?

I can’t say what comes into the purse of the National Lottery Trust Fund is impressive, but we are making progress in fits and starts incrementally. I can assure you that we are making progress. The way to go in this industry is automation. We must design a system where we can collect our revenue in real-time online without really wasting time depending on the good conscience of the patrons and licensees now that the industry has grown to this level. We need to tap into that robust advancement in technology so that we will make the organisation more efficient and more effective in promoting good causes for Nigerians.

Do you have enough skilled staff to carry out this function?

We have a sizeable number of staff. What is lacking is skill in some few areas. We are trying to upgrade our skills in IT, which is the current mainstay and driver of this industry. We are also trying to see how we can skill up in managing the fund and the processes of this organisation. Of course, we need to do better in legal; that is, having the team that will defend the actions of the organisation. Going forward, that will also add value to the work of the organisation. We are working in different areas to bring the National Lottery Trust Fund up so that our services will continue to be efficient, our resources will be managed efficiently, and Nigerians will better appreciate the organisation.