National Lottery: Cutting our tongues to chew?
Governments over the world undertake initiatives that would rake in money for national development. Over the years, one of the most reliable avenues has been the lotteries, which also provided employment for many people.
Lotteries are games of chance, where one stakes with a smaller amount and has the possibility of multiplying the amount staked. They are popular in both the rich and the poor countries.
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In Ghana, the Lotteries Authority was established as the Department of National Lotteries in 1958, with a mandate to organise raffles for the public to have fun and win prizes.
According to its website, a law was passed in 1960 to start lottery in Ghana, with the aim of raising revenue to support the development of the country. Since 2006, an act of Parliament has changed its name to the National Lottery Authority.
From a time when winning numbers were announced on radio and on television at a particular time and characterised by the picking of balls inscribed with numbers and the jingle of Pat Thomas’s song ‘Sika ye Mogya’, the operations of the authority is now automated.
Though there is no doubt that the authority serves as a reliable source of mobilising revenue for national development, same cannot be said about its mandate to make people have fun and become rich. With an increasing popularity of the game in the 1970s and the difficulty to win, a new crop of people emerged prophesying to hold the key to unlock the machine and make stakers instant millionaires.
Usually in oversized political suits and shoes, with a wooden brief case to match and sleek tongues, lotto forecasters persuaded people to part with all manner of fortunes, but most never won.
Not even their own inability to win could convince the die-hards that ‘lotto doctors’, as they are known, are nothing but fakes and charlatans. Week after week, they were able to convince stakers that something little went amiss and the subsequent weeks would be better with new permutations; yet, mostly to no avail.
One would argue that because it has provided employment for some, it should not be criticised.
Following on the heels of forecasters is a large pool of lotto papers which its patrons said possessed the secret formula for “breaking the machine”. Here too, not much success has been achieved.
If anything at all, it is man hours that are lost as workers at all levels utilise office hours buried in lotto papers in their bid to break the machine.
In fact, in some cases, it is both bosses and their subordinates, who work the lottery numbers, therefore, such activity does not ruffle any feathers.
Some businesses have collapsed, while others are wobbling, as owners in their bid to break the machine kept dipping their fingers/hands into their capital.
On the home front, the lottery continues to cause a lot of havoc as school fees and “chop” money have all found their way to the lotto kiosks.
Alongside the national lottery, also emerged some operators known as “banker to banker “. These ones have no authority to use the numbers announced by the department to run their lotteries, but do so illegally.
Some of them often get into trouble with the law and often times too, winners are short-changed, as they are not able to redeem their pledges.
Perhaps, the biggest evil of the scheme is its ability to create an addiction akin to drugs. The more people lose, the more they are convinced that their winning days are not far off.
In the past, some winners have attributed their good fortunes to divine interventions such as dreams and numbers of newly registered vehicles. In a society steeped in superstition, such beliefs have also fuelled the habit.
Unfortunately, since very few stakers ever get to smile to the bank by way of winning, one can confidently conclude that all in all, the poor citizen losses out.
There may be the construction of a few amenities here and there, but this pitters into insignificance compared to the addiction, lack of motivation to embark on honest labour, the man hours lost and the general poverty it causes.
In light of the above, I wonder whether the lottery is anything more than “cutting our tongues to chew.”
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