Nigeria pushes state-level gambling regulation after Supreme Court ruling

Nearly 18 months after Nigeria’s Supreme Court said lotteries and gambling fall under state, not federal, authority, the country’s states are still building the legal rails. For PSPs and operators, the practical issue is no longer whether regulation exists, but which state licence covers which activity.

1. In November 2024, the court struck down the Nigeria National Lottery Act and held that state assemblies, not the federal government, must regulate gambling within their own jurisdictions. The case was originally filed by Lagos State 16 years earlier, asking a basic federalism question with very non-basic commercial consequences: who gets to supervise the industry in a country of 36 states.
2. The seven-member panel said the National Assembly had no power to control or regulate lotteries in Nigeria because, under Nigerian law, “lottery” is a residual matter. That matters because betting and gambling are not on the federal parliament’s exclusive list of 68 subjects, which covers areas such as defence, security, and banking.
3. While some states built their own frameworks, 22 states took a collective route. In May 2025, they formed the Federation of State Gaming Regulators of Nigeria (FSGRN) and introduced the Subnational Reciprocal Licensing Framework, which lets operators obtain a single licence, the Universal Reciprocal Certificate (URC), valid across all member states.
4. The FSGRN says the framework was designed to reduce the fragmentation that followed the Supreme Court ruling and make it easier for operators to work across multiple state jurisdictions. It also waived 2025 licence fees for operators moving from the National Lottery Regulatory Commission framework into the new system.
5. According to H2 Gambling Capital, Nigeria’s gambling industry generated nearly $1.600 million in gross gaming revenue in 2025. Football betting still drives most of the activity, powered by interest in the English Premier League, the UEFA Champions League, and local competitions, with brands such as Bet9ja and SportyBet building large audiences through mobile apps and heavy advertising.

Online casinos are increasingly pressing into that market. Cheaper mobile internet and better payment systems have made slot games, live dealer products, and crash-style offerings easier to access, and many operators now bolt them on as an extra entertainment layer inside their platforms. For payment providers, that means a market that is not just large, but also more vertically mixed than the old “sports betting only” view of Nigeria.