NLA Good Causes?  How funds meant for the poor and orphans were blown on awards, galas and the rich

On the fenceless campus of a school at Battor Manya in the Volta Region, two boys aggressively stared at each other. They uttered no words. They just growled.

Then one of them took off, running towards an uncompleted building. The others followed.

The two suddenly stopped at the entrance of the building.

About 20 metres away, another group of children huddled together. They hugged and shouted names. One bulky student, with the voice of a ring-side announcer, screamed invectives that are common in coastal communities in Accra. They were directed at no one. His peers burst into laughter.

One of them started crying.  The tears flowed unrestrained.

A teacher standing by smiled.

In everyday life, the sight of crying children can easily irritate or draw sympathy from parents, but in Three Kings Special School, learning to cry is part of the curriculum.

Unlike their counterparts without disabilities, some children living with intellectual disabilities are unable to express their emotions.

“Some of them don’t even know danger. They don’t feel any pain. If they’re in a situation in which there is pain, it is very difficult for them to express it,” the headmaster of the school, Wisdom Asantide, said. “Speech is a problem for them. So, if that person can cry, then you’ll know that something serious is happening to him or her.”

While the teachers and caregivers worry about the emotional growth of these students, there is also another big problem that keeps the school administrators scratching their heads.  The school currently houses 115 students from age 12 to the mid-30s in two congested dormitories.

The building the boys had sprinted toward without a second thought, serving as a backdrop for their games, is itself part of the problem the headmaster loses sleep over.

Inside the uncompleted four-block dormitory, which has stalled for more than a decade, nature has invited itself and turned the corridors into a habitat for tree, shrubs and creeping plants—a disturbing monument of waste.

Such is the nature of the thicket that one would struggle to walk through the verdant greenery. The entire space has the eerie appearance of a haunted home.

The project was meant to solve the accommodation needs of the students and caregivers who are forced into dormitories meant for 50 people but now taking 150.

But more than a decade later, it is now home to nature.

It was because of the needs of students and other vulnerable people like the learners in Three Kings Special School that the National Lottery Authority (NLA) Good Causes Foundation was set up.

However, the Fourth Estate has found questionable use of the funds. 

In 2021, the National Lottery Authority (NLA), under the leadership of Samuel Awuku, its then Director General, set up what it calls the Good Causes Foundation.

According to NLA documents, the foundation was established in response to provisions of the law that established the authority, requiring it to set up a special lottery for the needy in society.

The said law is section 2(3) of Act 722.

The section states, “There shall be conducted as part of the operation of National Lotto, a lottery with the object of providing care and protection for the physically or mentally afflicted, the needy, the aged, orphans, and destitute children.”

However, contrary to the purpose of the Good Causes Foundation as outlined in the said section, the foundation spent millions of cedis on glamorous events and other questionable enterprises from 2021 to 2024.

Data available to The Fourth Estate on the foundation’s disbursements shows that a lot of the money was spent on sponsorship of elite organisations and events. For example, while the EMY Africa Awards received GHC90,000, the Ghana CEO Awards got GHC350,000. Gabby Asare Otchere-Darko’s Africa Prosperity Network Awards had GHC250,000, while the GIPC’s Ghana Club 100 Awards had GHC400,000. The Ashanti Business Leaders Excellence Awards received GHC50,000, while Glitz Africa publications also got GHC80,000 for the Ghana Women of the Year award.

The Information Services Department (ISD) received GHC40,000 for its Government PROs Awards, and the Governance and Business Leadership Awards secured GHC20,000, while the then Ministry of Public Enterprises got GHC50,000 for a study tour of Singapore.

The National Labour Commission was handed GHC 180,000 for local conferences and GHC 70,000 to attend an international labour conference in Geneva, while GHC 50,000 was committed to the fifth anniversary celebration of the free senior high school programme. JIT Magazine and Diary also had GHC100,000 for the presidential diary publication.

It did not stop there. The NLA, under Mr Awuku, now Member of Parliament for Akuapem North, also spent funds meant for the destitute on the construction of police stations and an astroturf in the constituency he would later contest elections and win.

The NLA also gave out GHC50,000 for the memoir project of former Black Stars captain, Asamoah Gyan, one of the country’s richest footballers, who lives in a USD 3 million mansion.

There are many more …

The Chief of Staff’s office received GHC350,000 for the Independence Day fanfare, while MPs from both sides of the political divide received more than one million cedis for pet causes. Meanwhile, the Attorney General’s office had GHC570,000 for conferences and seminars.

The NLA gave out these freebies at a time when psychiatric hospitals in the country remained chronically underfunded and overcrowded, and orphanages relied on charitable donations to survive.

Mr Awuku defends expenses

The immediate-past Director-General of the National Lottery Authority, Samuel Awuku, defended the Foundation’s spending, describing it as part of its mandate to serve society.

“The law allows the NLA, in consultation with its board and the Finance Ministry, to support broader obligations to society,” he argued, noting that the authority had also supported prisons, the Ghana Police Service, and community-based projects.

Mr. Awuku could not, however, identify specific provisions of the law that permitted such expenditures. Instead, he pointed to the pillars of the Good Causes Foundation – Health, Education, Sports and Youth Development, and Arts and Culture – as the basis for the spending.

“If you’re going strictly by the act, it would turn out that so many things that the NLA has been doing are illegal,” he told The Fourth Estate. “If you take the European Lottery, for example, their motto is for the benefit of society, so they don’t make profit. I realised that the very reason for the establishment of the NLA is to provide or support good causes and that’s [what] all lottery bodies all over the world [are doing].”

He also claimed that the use of the funds for such events was a marketing strategy to put the NLA in the minds of business owners to patronize the Caritas platform.

When The Fourth Estate noted that the law mandates the NLA to generate revenue for the state, Mr. Awuku responded that the authority “does not operate in isolation but as part of international bodies.”

Asked about Good Causes Foundation funds being used for Independence Day celebrations, he said it was not unusual, adding, “The Office of the Chief of Staff requests funding for some of these events.”

Former Coordinator declines to comment

When The Fourth Estate reached out to the former Coordinator of the Good Causes Foundation, Amma Frimpong, she declined to comment.

“Please, you do realise that I still work for the National Lottery Authority, and I’m bound by its laws and as such, I’m under no obligation to respond to anything outside its mandate?”

Editor’s note: Below is the list of the first 100 beneficiaries. The Fourth Estate will subsequently publish the full list of all beneficiaries.