Associate Editor at The Fourth Estate, Seth Bokpe, has stressed that the work of the National Lottery Authority (NLA) must be guided strictly by laws, not by practices elsewhere.
Speaking on The Pulse on JoyNews on Friday, September 26, Mr Bokpe responded to comments made by former NLA Director-General, Sammy Awuku, following The Fourth Estate’s exposé on the Authority.
Mr Awuku had argued that state lotteries around the world fund community projects in different ways and questioned why the investigation suggested that he misused NLA funds when, globally, such practices exist.
But Mr Bokpe insisted that the NLA’s operations are governed by specific legislation, which must be respected.
“Was the worldwide law regulating his activities at the NLA when he was there, or was it the NLA Act? We could’ve easily thrown away the law and said operate by the world standards. But there is a reason we have a law to govern what he was doing,” he said.
He added that raising concerns about what Ghana’s law says is not the same as opposing development.
“If we raise concerns about what the law says, it is better for him to say okay, we could’ve amended the law to meet what the law expects of us. But so long as these laws remain on our statute books, and you are supposed to go by it and you didn’t do that, you can’t justify what you did,” Mr Bokpe said.