Woman wins enough to fund JKIA expansion

“Unless I hit the jackpot” is a cliché response given by most Kenyans when faced with the possibility of having to cough up huge amounts of money.

Not many Kenyans know what the statement really means but, for starters, a real jackpot can transform not only your lifestyle but also those of several generations after you.

Take for instance Ms Ira Curry, one of two winners of the Mega Millions lottery in the United States. On Wednesday she walked into the Georgia State Lottery headquarters holding her ticket with the lucky numbers 8, 14, 17, 20, 39 and 7 (Mega Ball) and claimed her share of the Sh55 billion ($648 million) jackpot, the second-biggest in US lottery history.

Ms Curry, 56, who bought her ticket at an Atlanta newsstand, chose to receive her money in a lumpsum cash payment of Sh14.8 billion ($173.8 million) after taxes.

She also could have opted for a larger annuity sum that would have been paid in instalments over 30 years.

“It’s unreal. It’s like I’m still dreaming,” Ms Curry, who lives in an Atlanta suburb, said in a statement issued by the Georgia Lottery. She bought the ticket for $1.

She heard the name of the retail location where the winning ticket was sold and one of the winning numbers on the radio while driving, stopped to call her daughter to check the numbers and discovered she had won, lottery officials said. Ms Curry, who is married, asked lottery officials not to disclose further information about her or her family for now. She said she is not planning to address the media directly.

The jackpot was just Sh1.7 billion ($20 million) less than the record Sh55.7 billion ($656 million) that was shared among three Mega Millions ticket holders in March last year.

The US figures, though, make a joke of the jackpots won in Kenya.

The highest lottery won in the country so far remains the Tetemesha na Safaricom Sh10 million prize won on June 25 by Damaris Wanjiku.

Ms Wanjiku is a hairdresser in Nairobi and is married to a hawker.

Kenya Charity Sweepstakes public relations manager Peter Njoroge said their largest jackpot is the Sh2.94 million prize won on June 4.

Hitting a jackpot of Sh55 billion would make you –– before taxes –– the second-richest Kenyan. Forbes magazine’s latest ranking of Africa’s 50 richest places the CEO of Bidco Oil Refineries, Mr Vimal Shah and family, as Kenya’s wealthiest with a net worth of Sh136 billion.

Mr Naushad Merali, a Kenyan Asian tycoon and the founder of the Sameer Group, is listed as worth Sh37 billion.

And going by the 2011 list by the same magazine, her share of the jackpot would be richer than President Uhuru Kenyatta who was said to be worth Sh42 billion ($500 million) and industrialist Chris Kirubi whose wealth was placed at Sh26 billion ($300 million).

Indeed, the President was struck off the Forbes list on the argument that there was no evidence that he was the custodian of the Kenyatta family wealth, making it difficult to ascertain his net value.

Mr Kirubi was also dropped off because his net worth was “not enough to make the 2012 list”.

If you got the actual jackpot, you could also bail out the country and foot the cost of constructing the new terminal at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (JKIA) with the capacity to handle 20 million passengers a year. The cost of the project is Sh55.6 billion.

You could also make Nakumatt executives and staff jealous after having worked tirelessly for a year to sell goods worth Sh55 billion.

With the full amount, you could have bailed out the Treasury for a whole year and stopped them from increasing the external public debt from June 2012 to June 2013 by Sh55 billion.

You could also have bankrolled Kenya Airways in 2012 as the company’s total costs stood at Sh55.3 billion.

Mr Njoroge said Kenyan jackpot winners are not taxed. But this will end as of next year when the Kenya Revenue Authority starts levying taxes on such monies.

A state lottery official said Ms Curry had used the birth dates of family members as the basis for selecting her winning numbers.

Young Soo Lee, who owns a Gateway Newsstand in Atlanta’s affluent Buckhead area, said she was thrilled to learn from local television news that someone had purchased a winning ticket at her store.

“I’m so happy,” said Lee, who came to the US from Korea in 1980 and bought the newsstand, in an office building on Lenox Road, nine years ago.

Lee said even her customers who did not win were sharing in the excitement. “Everybody is a hug, a hug, a hug,” she said.

The other winning ticket was sold at a retail location called Jennifer’s Gift Shop on Tully Road in San Jose, according to Alex Traverso, a California lottery official.

Cathy Johnston said the shop was owned by Thuy Nguyen, who, according to the San Jose Mercury News, took over the business four months ago.

Under California’s lottery rules, which differ from those in Georgia, the American of Vietnamese origin will receive a $1 million cash bonus for selling the winning ticket, a payment retailers earn as an incentive for participating in the lottery programme.

As much as 70 per cent of Mega Millions tickets are typically bought on the day of the drawing, said Paula Otto, Virginia’s lottery director and lead director of the multi-state Mega Millions game. Ticket buying reached fever pitch over the weekend with 20 per cent more chances sold than expected, Otto said.

Mega Millions is sold in 43 of the 50 US states. New rules went into effect in October that lowered the odds of winning to one in 259 million but kept the price of tickets at one dollar each.