Aren't the real oil thieves of Nigeria the state?
Are the Australian government "thieves" for taxing Rio Tinto?
ideally the Australian Government is representative and working on behalf of the overwhelming majority of Australians putting revenues in long term investment funds for security and into public infrastructure that benefits the health, security and economic well being of the nation.
This is not always the case for <random post-colonial African state> (or indeed any of the 190+ countries about the globe).
They should belong to the people. The state and the people are not the same thing in Australia and certainly not the same thing in Nigeria.
I mean, that sounds like a nice slogan that doesn't really mean anything. Can you give an example of what that would mean in practice?
The Government Pension Fund Global, also known as the Oil Fund, was established in 1990 to invest the surplus revenues of the Norwegian petroleum sector. It has over US$1.19 trillion in assets,[1] and holds 1.4% of all of the world’s listed companies, making it among the world’s largest sovereign wealth funds.[2][3] In December 2021, it was worth about $250,000 per Norwegian citizen.
Simply gifting the finite stuff in the ground to a corporation to dig up and sell for nothing is an act of corruption at best and out and out treason at worst.
Also: these some of these https://www.arabianbusiness.com/industries/banking-finance/t...
But here comes the agency problem.
Then, the state is, equally importantly, a self-defence agency, which protect citizens from threats external (army) and internal (police). Hence the state controls the tools of violence.
The agency problem intensifies.
A carefully built system of checks and balances can sort of keep it at bay. Less carefully built systems turned into tyrannical regimes many, many times in recent history, all across the world.