All Norwegians Become Millionaires, In Oil Saving Landmark......Nigeria are we that greedy or dull????

Siv Jensen, leader of Norway's Fremskrittspartiet (Progress party), speaks to party members while waiting for the result of the general elections in Oslo, September 9, 2013.

 The report you are about to read, after going through, I couldn't help but wonder why this cannot happen in Nigeria.
Read the interesting report by Reuters below:

Everyone in Norway became a theoretical crown millionaire on Wednesday in a milestone for the world's biggest sovereign wealth fund that has ballooned thanks to high oil and gas prices.
Set up in 1990, the fund owns around 1 percent of the world's stocks, as well as bonds and real estate from London to Boston, making the Nordic nation an exception when others are struggling under a mountain of debts.A preliminary counter on the website of the central bank, which manages the fund, rose to 5.11 trillion crowns ($828.66 billion), fractionally more than a million times Norway's most recent official population estimate of 5,096,300.

It was the first time it reached the equivalent of a million crowns each, central bank spokesman Thomas Sevang said.
Not that Norwegians will be able to access or spend the money, squirreled away for a rainy day for them and future generations. Norway has resisted the temptation to splurge all the windfall since striking oil in the North Sea in 1969.
Finance Minister Siv Jensen told Reuters the fund, called the Government Pension Fund Global, had helped iron out big, unpredictable swings in oil and gas prices. Norway is the world's number seven oil exporter.
"Many countries have found that temporary large revenues from natural resource exploitation produce relatively short-lived booms that are followed by difficult adjustments," she said in an email.

 

The fund, equivalent to 183 percent of 2013 gross domestic product, is expected to peak at 220 percent around 2030.

"The fund is a success in the sense that parliament has managed to put aside money for the future. There are many examples of countries that have mot managed that," said Oeystein Doerum, chief economist at DNB Markets.

Norway has sought to avoid the boom and bust cycle by investing the cash abroad, rather than at home. Governments can spend 4 percent of the fund in Norway each year, slightly more than the annual return on investment.

Still, in Norway, oil wealth may have made the state reluctant to make reforms or cut subsidies unthinkable elsewhere. Farm subsidies allow farmers, for instance, to keep dairy cows in heated barns in the Arctic.

It may also have made some Norwegians reluctant to work. "One in five people of working age receives some kind of social insurance instead of working," Doerum said, despite an official unemployment rate of 3.3 percent.

Around the world, Citizens of many oil producing nations, are reaping the benefits of their rich economy.

Norway is not the only country whose citizens live affluently with poverty reduced to the barest minimum.

Another example is Kuwait the 11th largest producer of oil in the world. A diplomat friend recently visited Kuwait and gisted me about how their airport was so beautiful and had solid gold pillars, how their police officers(particular women) were dressed in designer gear(LV an things)and diamonds...and how generally citizens lived very comfortably

At the moment, Nigeria is the 10th largest producer of oil in the world, yet, we are in no way close to the Norwegian situation- or the economic situation of many oil producing countries. In fact, the average Nigerian still lives below a dollar a day.

However, I am of the view that if  we put prioritize correctly, phase out or drastically reduce corruption, and vote for leaders who truly have the interest of its citizens at heart, Nigeria can also achieve what the Norwegians( and other oil producing countries) have over time even though we have a larger population.