The Federal Capital Territory Lottery Regulatory Office says it has begun full operations as the gaming regulator for Abuja. Operators that held National Lottery Regulatory Commission licences, and that work in the territory or plan to, are told to start regularising within seven days of the notice.
The office, known as the FCT-LRO, published a public notice signed by its director-general, Lanre Gbajabiamila. Trade reports, including BettingCompanies.Africa, say the text appeared as a paid announcement in Premium Times on 10 November 2026. Pulse Nigeria reproduced the notice the following day. The wording in those reproductions is treated here as the office’s text. The notice is headed as the start of full business operations, and describes the FCT-LRO as the authority responsible for the oversight, regulation and supervision of gaming activities within the Federal Capital Territory.
Operators already doing business in the FCT, the notice says, must comply with FCT licensing and regulatory requirements and deal with the FCT-LRO on regulatory matters. Official correspondence is directed to an office in Wuse 2, Abuja, and to the address [email protected].
The instruction to former NLRC licensees
The most immediate direction is aimed at operators previously licensed by the National Lottery Regulatory Commission. Those that are operating in the FCT, or that intend to, “are hereby required to approach the FCT-LRO to regularise their regulatory status.” They must start that process within seven days of publication of the notice.
The office is not cancelling the time left on a valid NLRC licence. The notice says any NLRC licence that remains valid and has not expired “will be recognised for the remainder of its validity period and converted to the corresponding FCT-LRO licence.” Holders, it adds, will retain the benefit of their unexpired terms, subject to the regularisation process the office prescribes. To get there, operators must present and hand over their former NLRC-issued licences for verification and documentation, complete the procedures, and obtain the appropriate FCT gaming licence.
The seven-day clock runs from publication. Because the notice appeared in more than one place on 10 and 11 November, this article does not invent a single calendar deadline. What the text requires is that affected operators begin the process within seven days of the notice being published, not that the conversion itself be finished in a week.
How the office reads the Supreme Court judgment
The FCT-LRO bases its role on the Supreme Court judgment in Attorney-General of Lagos State & 21 Others v Attorney-General of the Federation & 15 Others (Suit No. SC/1/2008), and on Section 299 of the 1999 Constitution. The notice says the Federal Capital Territory has a distinct constitutional status, with the National Assembly exercising the legislative powers that a state house of assembly would usually hold.
On online gaming, the office is careful. It says the Supreme Court judgment “did not expressly settle the full regulatory framework applicable to online gaming,” and in particular “did not establish that any one State has exclusive regulatory control over the online gaming market.” Online operators, it says, remain free to choose the regulator from which they obtain a licence, “based on their business model, operational needs and the regulatory framework they consider most suitable.” No state regulator, the notice adds, should interfere with, intimidate or coerce an operator merely because it has chosen another regulator.
That choice is not a way out of licensing altogether. The office reminds operators that “the online nature of a gaming platform does not, in itself, exempt an operation from applicable licensing and regulatory obligations where such obligations arise.” In other words, the FCT-LRO is asserting jurisdiction inside the territory, while arguing that the national online market is not the exclusive property of any one state.
Nigeria’s licensing map has been unsettled since the Supreme Court ruling curtailed the old federal lottery commission’s reach. The FCT notice is an attempt to put a territorial regulator in place in Abuja and to pull former federal licensees onto its books, without claiming a nationwide online monopoly.
The named lists, and their limits
For public awareness, the notice publishes named lists of operators it currently recognises as licensed in the FCT, in four groups: casino, sports betting, lotto and interactive gaming. It encourages the public to verify an operator’s licensing status before using its services.
This article does not repeat those lists in full, and it does not give a single headcount. Some trade reports have already noted that published reproductions of the lists do not agree on totals, and the Pulse text includes some repeated names. The reliable course is to read the office’s own notice and, where needed, to check with the FCT-LRO. A name on a reproduced list is not, by itself, a recommendation, and the absence of a name from a copy of the list is not a finding that an operator is unlicensed.
What the notice leaves unsaid
The notice does not say what happens if an operator misses the seven-day window, and it does not set out penalties, fees, or a timetable for completing conversion once the process has started. It also does not settle, as a matter of national law, the wider dispute about which regulator may license an online operator that serves customers in more than one Nigerian territory. Those points remain for later instruments, or for the courts.
For groups that still hold an unexpired NLRC licence and have any activity, or planned activity, in Abuja, the practical step described in the notice is to contact the new office and begin conversion, rather than to wait for a further announcement. For players in the FCT, the message is more basic: check that an operator is actually licensed before staking money, a point we have made more generally in our guide to why a licence matters.
Other African markets are writing new online rules at the same time. Mozambique’s licensing regime takes effect on 20 November, with a different, onshore model. The policy choice is not the same in every market, as Chile’s Senate committee vote for an online betting ban also showed. In Abuja, the immediate story is narrower: a new territorial office is open, and it has given former federal licensees a short window in which to start moving across.
Gambling is for adults aged 18 and over. This article is news reporting, not an advertisement. Under Spain’s Royal Decree 958/2020, only operators licensed by the DGOJ may advertise gambling to Spanish residents. Anyone in Nigeria who is worried about their own or someone else’s gambling should use official national support services.
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