We’ve often heard the old joke, “Why is the lotto doctor not rich himself?” The answer, for decades, has been, “Because he’s a Good Samaritan and that’s all.” But today, that innocence no longer fits. The National Lottery Authority (NLA), once a symbol of charity and chance, now sits at the center of a storm that has nothing to do with luck and everything to do with power.
The NLA is in the news again. This time, not for the unlawful diversion and misuse of its Good Causes Fund as exposed in The Fourth Estate’s earlier investigation, but for something even deeper, a structural capture that strikes at the heart of state authority itself. It is not just an economic misstep; it is a philosophical failure, a reversal of logic where the master serves the servant and calls it innovation.
Once, the NLA was one of Ghana’s most self-sustaining agencies, generating revenue, paying winners, and feeding the Consolidated Fund. It was a state enterprise with a simple function: regulate, operate, and redistribute. The law was clear. Every cedi from lottery sales was to pass through the Lotto Account, ensuring transparency and state control.
Then came KGL, a private company that began by violating that very law, operating online lotteries without authorization until it was fined GH¢10 million in 2019. That should have been the end of the story, the regulator asserting its authority over a rogue actor. Instead, that fine became the handshake of surrender. Within a few years, the same entity that was punished became the NLA’s sole partner and later its effective owner.
This capture unfolded under the leadership of Mr. Samuel Awuku, appointed by President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo during the NPP administration. It was during this period that the most consequential transformation of the Authority took place, not a transformation of efficiency or innovation, but of dependency and quiet privatization.
In The Fourth Estate’s latest report, the details of this corporate coup are laid bare: KGL’s questionable beginnings, its subsequent licensing, and the eventual handover of the NLA’s prime digital business, Ghana’s 5/90 online lottery, to a single company. In 2024, under the same government, the NLA signed a 15-year exclusive agreement with KGL to run the 5/90 online lottery. Overnight, 80 to 90 percent of the NLA’s core business was handed to one company.
The numbers are staggering. KGL reportedly made over GH¢3 billion from NLA’s game in 2024, while the NLA, the legal owner, made less than GH¢350 million, including the pittance KGL remitted as a fixed licence fee. That leaves a GH¢2.65 billion gap between what was earned in the name of the state and what the state actually received. Where did the GH¢2.65 billion difference go? If the Lotto Account did not record these proceeds as the law demands, who controlled the float, managed the accounts, and determined the final remittances? If KGL retained the bulk of the GH¢3 billion as revenue, profit, or operational cost, where is the audited verification? With no independent audit, no access to raw sales data, and no lawful entry of proceeds into the Lotto Account, the regulator became a dependent, the law a suggestion, and monopoly a policy.
By Kay Cudjoe
KGL’s defenders describe this as digital transformation. But digital transformation is supposed to empower the state, not enslave it. What has happened is digital colonization, a public monopoly privatized under the excuse of innovation.
Imagine the Ghana Revenue Authority outsourcing tax collection to a private firm that keeps nine out of every ten cedis and sends the rest as goodwill. That is what the NLA and KGL relationship has become.
And this was not an accident. It was design, the slow surrender of institutional independence in exchange for convenience, comfort, and campaign finance. The same political ecosystem that now calls for accountability watched as NLA’s main source of revenue was turned into a private pipeline.
In a proper democracy, this would trigger a parliamentary inquiry. It would summon both the NLA and the Ministry of Finance to explain why a state agency that once funded schools and hospitals now begs its licensee for survival.
But this is Ghana, where scandal is a news cycle, not a reckoning.
And yet, President John Dramani Mahama’s recent call for a reset in governance could find no better test case. When he demands that all financial infractions be fast-tracked to Nsawam, the NLA and KGL affair should be Exhibit A. Because if the law that jails a petty accountant for financial loss cannot question a billion-cedi monopoly, then justice in Ghana remains selective theatre.
This is not about one company. It is about the idea of the state. When a regulator no longer regulates, the republic begins to rot. When the state becomes a middleman in its own business, corruption is not an event, it is a system.
The real tragedy is that the NLA still holds the levers. The licence can be revoked. The audit can be ordered. The system can still be reclaimed. But the question is whether the political will exists or whether those who benefit from KGL’s comfort will continue to pretend not to see the exploitation in progress.
A government that cannot reclaim its own lottery cannot claim to have reclaimed the nation.
