The Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI) has called for the transfer of all oil revenue savings, totalling about $3.95 billion, to the custody of the Nigeria Sovereign Investment Authority (NSIA).
NEITI, in an occasional paper titled, ‘The Case for a Robust Oil Savings Fund for Nigeria’, stated that its position was informed by the transparency rating of the NSIA by the global Sovereign Wealth Institute.
NSIA had scored 9 out of 10 on the Sovereign Wealth Institute’s transparency index, the highest score by any African Sovereign Wealth Fund.
NSIA was set up in 2011 to build a savings base, develop infrastructure and provide stabilisation in times of economic stress for the country.
The fund was structured into three components – the Future Generations’ Fund 40 per cent, Nigeria Infrastructure Fund 40 per cent and 20 per cent for the Stabilisation Fund – and started off with a seed capital $1bn in 2012.
In November 2015 and March 2017, government transferred additional $500 million into the fund bringing the total savings to $1.5bn.
NEITI also noted that while the NSIA made N192bn returns on its investments, the Excess Crude Account and the 0.5 per cent Stabilisation Fund recorded zero returns on investment.
It also recommended that the $95m currently in the Stabilisation Fund and the $2.3bn in the Excess Crude Account should be transferred into the fund as investment savings.
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