The Terrible NLA-KGL Deal: NLA strikes! Demands critical data on sales and revenue from KGL, but KGL pushes back

While the contract requires weekly reconciliation of revenue, KGL says NLA must wait till 2026 to demand reconciliation.

Following the ongoing comprehensive revelations by The Fourth Estate on the state-fleecing deal between the National Lottery Authority (NLA) and KGL Technology Limited, the NLA has begun taking steps to right some of the wrongs under the deal.

The Fourth Estate’s credible sources within KGL Technology Limited have shown us letters written by the NLA to KGL in the first week of October 2025, demanding access to pre- and post-draw data on NLA’s 5/90 lotto, operated online and via USSD short code by KGL. Other critical records demanded by NLA from KGL include records on revenues, wins, and payments from January 1, 2025, to September 30, 2025.

Copies of letters shown to The Fourth Estate by our sources within KGL also indicate that NLA had written to request the same data from all the telecom companies (MTN, AT, and Telecel) that provide the USSD short code service for KGL’s operation of the NLA’s 5/90 lotto. The NLA has also written to the National Communications Authority (NCA), which issues and regulates USSD short codes for information on transactions via the NLA’s *959# short code operated by KGL.

In the letters seen by The Fourth Estate, the NLA indicates that the demand is to ensure compliance with conditions spelt out in the 15-year license granted to KGL by the previous NLA Board under the NPP government. The letters specifically mention Paragraphs 12 and 17 of the Licence granted to KGL.

Paragraph 17 of the Exclusive Licence granted to KGL states: “The parties shall conduct weekly reconciliations on transactions (pre- and post-draw, revenue, wins, prize and prize payments) during the term of this licence. For the avoidance of doubt, the reconciliation is to ensure that there are no discrepancies in the financial records of the NLA, and the Licensee (KGL), pursuant to Section 51 of Act 722.”

Despite this clear provision requiring reconciliation every week, such weekly reconciliations have never been carried out since the contract was signed in early 2024. As a result of the disregard for the weekly reconciliations, the NLA does not know how much sales and revenue KGL is making from the sale of the NLA’s 5/90 lottery.

Also, while the law mandates the NLA as the only body in Ghana that can conduct or operate a lottery, the NLA does not know how much is won each week on the KGL platform and how much KGL pays each week in winnings. Experts say with such opacity, KGL has literally become a lotto conductor and operator (another NLA), instead of being a lotto marketing company (LMC) as required by law.

Following the NLA letters, which, according to insiders, have unsettled the KGL leadership, the Executive Chairman of KGL, Alex Apau Dadey, wrote to NLA requesting that NLA defer its request to 2026.

Thus, while the License conditions require weekly reconciliation of revenues and other data, which has never been done in the past, KGL rather wants the current practice of non-compliance with the License provisions to continue until 2026.

Background

On September 30, 2025, The Fourth Estate published a story on how in 2019, the NLA granted what it called a provisional licence to KGL Technology Limited to sell national lotto online and using USSD (short code) as an LMC. This was after KGL had started selling online lotto illegally and was fined GHC10 million by the NLA. And this was at a time when digitalisation was fast shifting the lottery business online instead of the traditional analogue sales in lotto kiosks.

By 2023/2024, almost 80% to 90% of all stakers of national lotto were doing so online through their mobile phones. Thus, almost 90% of the NLA’s core business and revenue stream had moved online. In other words, almost 90% of NLA’s revenues into its Lotto Account would have been coming from the online sales of its lottery.

But the main source of the NLA’s revenue had been handed over to KGL through an obnoxious, state-fleecing licensing agreement signed-off by the previous boards and management of the NLA.   

After the expiration of the provisional licence, the NLA leadership granted KGL a new 10-year licence in 2022 (to expire in 2032). Then, in 2024 (before the expiration of the 10-year license), the management and board, curiously and strangely, replaced the 10-year license with a 15-year license (2024 to 2039). The reason given was that, KGL had come to the board to request to be granted an exclusive licence. So, the new 15-year license gave KGL the exclusive rights to operate NLA’s 5/90 lottery online via USSD short code.

Even though KGL is supposed to be an LMC, sales made by KGL do not directly go into the Lotto Account of the NLA as required by Law. Revenues generated by KGL from the sale of NLA’s 5/90 lotto go directly into KGL accounts. The NLA does not know how much revenue KGL generates from the sale of the NLA’s lotto every day, every week and every month.

KGL pays lotto winners directly from its accounts, and the balance is kept in KGL accounts. KGL does not have any obligation to transfer funds into the Consolidated Fund of the Republic of Ghana. KGL only pays to the NLA a license fee and some pre-determined amounts to the NLA’s Good Causes Foundation and Lotto Stabilisation Fund.  This is how KGL has literally become the NLA and turned the NLA into its LMC.

Meanwhile, if Ghanaians wake up tomorrow and KGL is nowhere to be found, NLA will bear all the responsibility of paying winners who may have bought their NLA 5/90 coupons through the KGL platform. This is because KGL is only selling the coupons on behalf of the NLA.

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