Nigeria’s sovereign wealth fund lowest among OPEC countries –

Despite its current status as Africa’s largest crude oil producer, Nigeria has been listed as the only crude oil exporting country with the lowest Sovereign Wealth Savings often created to hedge against volatility in the international oil market.

According to the Nigerian Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative (NEITI), the country’s $8 Sovereign Wealth Fund per capita can best be described as one of the lowest, better than only that of war-torn Iraq and crisis-hit Venezuela, both of which are members of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC).

Executive Secretary of NEITI, Waziri Adio, who made these observations in an Occasional Paper series presented in Abuja, stated that the balance in the three funds currently in existence (0.5 per cent stabilisation fund, ECA and NSIA), was less than $3.9 billion, which is not sufficient to fund 20 per cent of the N7.44 trillion 2017 federal budget.

He said with Nigeria facing gloomy prospects of depleting oil reserves and oil prices, it was time for government to take bold steps to avoid the looming danger against the future of its economy by paying attention to demands for a stabilisation fund for the country.

Abiodun Oyindamola, with Agency report