The enforcement team of the National Lottery Regulatory Commission (NLRC) led by the director of monitoring and enforcement, Sajo Mohammed allegedly sealed the administrative office of Nestle Plc located at 22-24 Industrial Avenue, Ilupeju, Lagos.
The enforcement team of the commission was said to have arrived the premises of Nestle at 22-24 Industrial Avenue, Ilupeju, Lagos on Monday.
It was gathered that the team sealed the premises of the beverage company after hours of failed negotiations with management of Nestle Plc which lasted for some hours.
The premises of the company, was however, unsealed almost immediately, following what the commission described as a “written undertaken by Nestle Plc to pay up its debts to the Federal Government of Nigeria, totaling N65.16 million.”
According to NLRC, Nestle had in 2009 carried out a promo lottery captioned “Nestle Milo Scratch and Win”, whose value was put at N10.92m; another promo in 2012 titled “Buy Save and Win More Promo” (Nestle New Year Shopper’s Combo) valued at N15m, and another in 2012, titled “Super Market Back 2 School, valued at N20 million and another in 2014, captioned “Year-End Shoppers Bag Promo, valued at N188,072,500.
“All these promotional lotteries were carried out by Nestle Plc without authorisation of the National Lottery Regulatory Commission, as required by law; ignoring all attempts by the commission for those lotteries to be properly regularized,” said Mohammed.
The commission alleged that the total value of the promotional lotteries was N233,992,500, with total regulation fees of N65,155,365.00, a claim Nestle is said to be contending.
The premises was, however, immediately unsealed paving the way for the company to continue its normal operations.
Lanre Gbajabiamila, the director general of NLRC said recently that the commission would step up enforcement against defaulting lottery operators, as well as companies involved in non-regularised promotional lotteries in the country.
JOSHUA BASSEY
