THE RELEVANCE OF THE APPLICATION OF NEW INSTITUTIONALISM AND STRUCTURAL FUNCTIONAL APPROACH AS THEORIES ON LOTTERY POLICY IN NIGERIA

The National Lottery Policy was established in Nigeria by an Act of the Parliament. The same law gave birth to the National Lottery Regulatory Commission (NLRC) and its sister agency, the National Lottery Trust Fund (NLTF). The NLRC is responsible for the registration of operators/licensees and generation of revenue which is channeled to the NLTFfor usefor the sports development in particular and otherp rojects for good causes. This calls for the subjection and evaluation of the policy to theories that are relevant for its execution hence the application of the New Institutionalism and Structural Functional approach in this circumstance is that institutions are central in politics and administration. Therefore, the — study of Political Science revolves around new institutionalism theory. Alternately, Structural Functionalism which is adopted from Sociology is significant and relevant to features of a political system. Every political system performs functions. This explains the necessity for using the two theories in this paper since both of them are complementary of each other. In order to boost the lottery policy in Nigeria for the benefit ofgovernment and licensees, it is recommended that management of the policy should embark on aggressive publicity to create awareness and clear doubts in the minds of Nigerians to accept lottery which is a lawful policy and not gambling that has no legal backing in Nigeria. It is also recommended that sanctions should be applied on illegal lottery operators to pave way for better lottery enhancement in the country.