Over the years, Nigeria has almost perfected the bad habit of under-utilising the vast resources at her disposal.
The country has got the potential to be one of the most economically viable nations in the world, but we are still toiling amongst the poorest nations in the universe.
This habit has also extended into our gambling space.
Gambling remains a controversial subject in the country, with some groups (mostly religious groups) kicking against it, but say whatever you want about gambling, it has come to stay and has very much become part and parcel of our day-to-day lives.
Rather than kicking against it, we should pick it up, polish it off, control the drawbacks and look to take advantage of the undoubted shiny sides.
One of the shiny sides is the enormous revenue potential of the Nigerian gambling industry.
By virtue of being by far the largest gambling nation in Africa (in terms of population), you would expect Nigeria to also be the top nation on the continent from an economic perspective.
This is unfortunately not the case. We are still rated to have the third biggest gambling economy after South Africa and Kenya.
This anomaly can be attributed to many factors, one of which is the untidy set up of our gambling regulatory framework.
We have a federal body, the National Lottery Regulatory Commission (NLRC), responsible for overseeing gambling all over the country, but there are also state regulators like the Lagos State Lottery and Gaming Authority, Oyo State Gaming Board and the Anambra State Gaming Board that regulate gambling within those individual states.
These multiple bodies have created plenty of confusion within each state, with operators uncertain of which organisation they are answerable to.
It also doesn’t help that there’s not much synergy between the federal and state bodies, with both constantly bickering over basic gambling legislative matters.
Many active gambling operators in Nigeria have taken the seemingly safe option of obtaining licences from both the federal and state regulators, while some others have chosen to stick to one.
The lack of clarity within the Nigerian system has also kept some big international companies away from the country.
Global giants, bet365, for example, recently launched in Ghana, with the English-based bookie pointing out the solid regulatory framework in Ghana as the reason our West African rivals were chosen for their first official entry into Africa.
Kenya has also welcomed many more international players in recent years, with the organised gambling setting being a major attraction to these operators.
As mentioned on Kenya’s top betting affiliate site, My Betting Sites Kenya, which ranks the very best betting sites in Kenya, there are now over 100 online bookmakers in the Kenyan market.
Kenya has just one central regulatory body, the Betting Control and Licensing Board (BCLB), which oversees gambling all over the country.
Nigeria can certainly learn a thing or two from the East African country.
That will help us to attract more operators, and also recoup significantly more tax revenue from the booming industry.