Sovereign Wealth Fund Governance, Resource Curse Mitigation, and Long-Term Economic Diversification in Nigeria

This dissertation examines the governance architecture of Nigeria's sovereign wealth fund, the Nigeria Sovereign Investment Authority, and develops an original evaluative framework for assessing its contribution to resource curse mitigation and long-term economic diversification. Resource curse theory predicts that oil-dependent economies experience paradoxical growth underperformance due to Dutch disease effects, rent-seeking behaviour, institutional erosion, and inter-generational capital depletion. Sovereign wealth funds are widely proposed as institutional mechanisms to counteract these dynamics, yet the conditions under which they succeed or fail in their mitigation function remain theoretically and empirically contested. The study employs a comparative institutionalist methodology, constructing an original comparative case analysis of the Nigeria Sovereign Investment Authority alongside the sovereign wealth funds of Botswana, Norway, Chile, and Azerbaijan, spanning the period 2004 to 2024. Data are drawn from sovereign wealth fund transparency reports, national accounts data, political economy indicators, and 30 elite interviews with investment authority officials, finance ministry representatives, and independent fund governance experts. The theoretical framework integrates the resource curse literature, principal-agent theory of public fund governance, and the long-run capital accumulation models of Hartwick and Solow. The dissertation develops an original governance quality index for resource-based sovereign wealth funds, incorporating dimensions of operational independence, transparency, counter-cyclical discipline, and diversification mandate coherence. Original contributions include the governance index, the comparative case typology, and a contingency model of SWF effectiveness as a resource curse mitigation instrument. Policy implications are developed for improving the NSIA's governance and investment mandate design. Keywords: sovereign wealth fund, resource curse, Nigeria, governance, economic diversification