Nigeria Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative (NEITI) highlights that savings from oil products cannot fund 20 percent of 2017 budget.

In its second occasional paper series unveiled by its executive secretary, Waziri Adio, NEITI said, according to TheCable, “Nigeria has about three decades of experience in implementing different oil revenue funds. However, attempts at oil revenue savings have been plagued by contested legal frameworks, governance issues and inadequate political will”.

“Nigeria has one of lowest natural resource revenue savings in the world. The balance in the three funds (0.5% stabilisation fund, ECA and NSIA) is less than $3.9 billion, not enough to fund 20% of 2017’s federal budget.

“Nigeria’s $1.5 billion sovereign wealth fund is one of the lowest in the world, has one of the worst ratio to annual budget (10%), and one of the lowest SWF per capital ($8), better only than war-torn Iraq and crisis-hit Venezuela, but not by much.

“In contrast, Norway, a country of 5.2 million people (2.8% of Nigeria’s 186million people) has a sovereign wealth fund worth $922 billion (which is 23,641% of the $3.9 billion balance in Nigeria’s three oil revenue funds)”.

In simpler terms, if Nigeria’s oil savings were shared across the country, each citizen will have access to only $8, after over 60 years of oil exploration.

For countries like Norway, Kuwait and Botswana is at $185,000, $148,000 and $14,400 respectively.