Andrew Humber-Osofisan is the president and chief executive of Humber Group, a boutique firm that specializes in a diverse range of business disciplines.
 Through its technology partner, Humber Technologies, the company recently developed a unique Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD) based lottery gaming that promises to transform lives of ordinary Nigerians and enrich the country called MobilottoAfrica.
Humber-Osofisan spoke to peter ugwu on the objectives of the operation revolves around
Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Solutions and Financial and Business Consulting and Advisory Services.

Humber’s Interest in Africa
Since I came back to Nigeria, after 32 years of sojourning in America, I saw gaps that must be closed and needs to be fulfilled, not just in Nigeria, but Africa in general.

One thing is that Nigerians are very smart people, and they make things happen abroad, then why can’t we replicate those achievements abroad here in Nigeria.

That formed the main interest for us investing in African.

Lottery Business and Abuses
First of all, Nigeria is the only country where an individual or corporate organization actually obtains lottery license; elsewhere it is either the lottery is owned by the Federal Government or the State Government.

 But in a situation whereby an individual is licensed to operate a lottery, it becomes a problem, because it takes a lot of resources to actually establish a solid lottery operation.

If you look at places like Canada, UK, among others, it takes a lot of structure to put this in place.

 I think that is one of the reasons it has not really been grounded in Nigeria. However, we have agencies that can regulatory the industry in Nigeria.

But when you have so many people getting lottery licenses, coming up with several schemes, at the end, some of them close shop due to lack of sustainable structure in place.

They lack the capacity to make the lottery scheme favour the community, the players and the government.

They use the proceeds to enrich themselves, and not necessarily to add value to the players themselves.

MobilottoAfrica Distinguishing Characteristics 
The lottery of MobiLottoAfrica is a lottery that is like the ones played in the United States of America, the jackpot goes up to $500 million.

It is the same kind of Lottery we play in Toronto, Canada, or like the Euromillion.

Here, we have developed it into mobile applications, because Nigerians are used to their mobile phones, which has become the easiest way to reach people.

We have application for that. And mobile lottery cuts across religious and ethnic beliefs.

So, we are bringing a global perspective to the process, which will make a lot of difference.

What we have done in essence is that every cell-phone, in the hands of the player, becomes the lottery terminal, which is expected to be operational 24 hours of the day.

So, we are going to build agencies or physical terminals, which cuts down cost.

Every individual carries his own lottery terminal in his hand and will not be subjected to locate any physical terminal before he plays.

MobilottoAfrica and Fight against Unemployment
I would like to take this from the report that government can make about $300 billion annually from an organized lottery industry. 

The thing is that when a lottery is played, the Government gets 20 per cent share.

Imagine a situation where we have 98 million adults (of 18 years and above), who are legally qualified to play the lottery, even if only 10 per cent of that participate; that is 9.8 million people playing either on daily, weekly or monthly basis.

Now, our lottery is a daily one, so if 10 per cent of our adult population plays N100 per play, that is N900,080 million, so if the government is taking 20 per cent of that every day, by the time it gets to months, we should be talking about billions of naira coming into government’s coffers.

More so, I would like us to take into consideration that an individual plays once. Our statistics show that an average player plays four times.

By the time, government gets this revenue it will plough the fund back into education, health, agriculture, youths empowerment, among other, and employment is created.

How about the players? 50 per cent of all the money that comes goes to them.

Therefore, when you have N900, 080 million and you divide it into two, money goes out to somebody every day, they are being empowered, entrepreneurial spirit is created and standard of living is improved.

That is what lottery does in every other country that genuinely bought into it.

Penetrating the Skeptical Market   
Humber group has already penetrated the market, because our booth is in everybody’s hand.

The second thing is that Nigerians are used to lottery-promos. So, it is not like they are not aware.

And with the recent ban of lotteries and promos by NCC, we are giving Nigerians another option, because ours is different and there are a lot of transparencies with what we are doing.

When you play the lottery today, the draws are done on a national television, so that the whole world can see; whoever has won, the public will see the result.

And within 20 minutes of the draw we shall send out an alert congratulating the winner. So, trying to penetrate the market will be simple, as the equipment required to push this is already in the market.

Strategies for Sustainability
On my part, the project will sustain itself for ever. However, there are extenuating circumstances and forces like what just happened (NCC’s ban on promos and lotteries); assuming we have been running ours and NCC says stop.

That is a disruption and will not sustain it. If the telecoms base stations go down, probably for vandalism or technical hitches, because everything runs on networks, that will affect the players also.

But all things being equal, it will run smoothly. The results are announced on daily basis and
people are empowered.

Sustaining Platform through Software Applications
Well, taking into cognizance of what happens in Nigeria, especially due to infrastructure; electricity, network congestion, etc, we developed a solution called Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD).

What that does is that it acts like an SMS and WAP application.

With our technology one does not require to download or subscribe to anything. It’s just to embrace the USSD platform and when you finish playing you sign out.

So, it does not have congestion issue. It does not use the same channel that voice uses or SMS. With this USSD platform, assuming we have a million people that play at once, the system will not take a million and one.

Once one person finishes a new player gets on. The maximum time one can spend on a session is 40 minutes.

And it takes 20 to 28 seconds to kick off play.

Unlike SMS, if you make a wrong play our system will send and invalid response to you. You are never charged until you make a right play.

Therefore, there are no arbitrary charges or surcharging of the players.

Remitting of Prizes to the Winners
When I came back to Nigeria, what I heard was that no body will believe in this lottery; there are so much fraud.

People cited cases of multi-million naira lottery schemes that came up and people believed them, only for them to be duped, and I answered that the way we do ours is that when a player wins, he gets a congratulatory SMS within 20 minutes.

Then the ticket will be announced, because for every play there is a ticket attached to it.

Then, every individual has a pass code given to him. In essence we have created file for every player using the telephone number, so for everything you do, you are easily recognized.

Then the player will initiate claims by pressing ‘winning’ that will redirect him to Mobilotto platform. And what we have done is that we have partnered major banks in Nigeria.

So, the winner chooses the banks he wants to use and we forward the transaction code to the bank. All of this happens within seconds.

That is the technology we are bringing to bring sanity and transparency into the industry.

It’s either the person withdraws with his ATM card or it becomes a mobile money.

In other words, there will be no cash transaction, thereby bringing the industry to comply with the CBN’s cashless policy. In essence we have created the largest mobile money eco-system in Nigeria.

Ombudsman
We have a customer care programme. At the same time, this is automated. So we try to minimize the contact.

There is an Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system that we have created which is on the same USSD platform where the player partakes in the process.

And you don’t get charged for any of these, except when you play and it is valid.

But in a situation whereby a player could not get satisfactory answer or he needs more explanations, there is a toll-free line to call.

Regulators’ Backing
When we started, we spoke to the authorities; of course anybody can be skeptical about a new thing.

Unfortunately, some people believe that when a Nigerian is coming up with a technology it doesn’t make sense; it must come from China, America or India.

We had worked with the America Government, developed applications they used in this sector, so all we need is for the Nigerian government to give this a trial and believe in Nigerians.

Even as we didn’t get much support, but we had the confidence and now they are beginning to accept the platform after some demos.

We have completed the technology, but the delay has been with connecting the telecos. In spite of the ban, NCC is doing a great job.

I have seen them change a lot of things. On the recent ban of promos and lotteries, I think there is a misunderstanding in some place.

A blanket ban on lottery, I think it is misinformed. They would have said that lottery licensees should have been exempted because there is a regulatory body for that.

And I don’t think there is a lottery licencee in the country that is doing full mobile lottery like ours, they are mainly on SMS platforms and that is where the problems come in. NCC should look at that too.