Aliko Dangote, Chairman of Dangote Industries Limited (DIL), has accused Farouk Ahmed, Chief Executive Officer of the Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority (NMDPRA), of paying about $5 million in school fees for his children in Swiss secondary schools, raising concerns over alleged corruption and economic sabotage in Nigeria’s downstream petroleum sector.
Dangote made the allegation on Sunday during a news conference at the Dangote Petroleum Refinery, where he called on the Federal Government to investigate Ahmed’s finances rather than summarily removing him from office. According to the billionaire industrialist, the payment covered four children over six years, a level of expenditure he said was inconsistent with the known income of a public official.
Although Dangote did not disclose the names of the Swiss schools, he argued that such spending raises serious questions about conflicts of interest and the integrity of regulatory oversight.
The group president said such expenditure raises serious questions about potential conflicts of interest and the integrity of regulatory oversight in the downstream petroleum sector.
“I’ve had people actually complaining about a regulator who put his children in secondary school, and that secondary school education, which is six years, four of them cost Nigeria $5 million,” Dangote said.
“My children went to a Nigerian secondary school. They didn’t go outside Nigeria to attend secondary school.
“… I don’t know why the authority chief executive, Mallam Farouk, has four of his children that he educated in Switzerland at the cost of $5 million for their secondary school education alone, not university.
“And I know that one of them just finished Harvard. So, I want to see what kind of system we are operating that people are now busy destroying a country, taking money from the government, because his income does not match paying this kind of fees.”
The billionaire said the NMDPRA chief should be given a chance to clear his name by being investigated and not sacked.
Dangote said the law should be allowed to take its course, but threatened to take legal steps against the school to ensure the disclosure of Ahmed’s payment, if he denies the allegation.
“The Code of Conduct Bureau, or any other body deemed appropriate by the government, can investigate the matter. Let them see whether his income matches the five million he has paid [as] school fees for six years for four of his children, this is without tickets,” he said.
“He doesn’t need to be sacked. But let him clear that he has not compromised his various positions in government at the cost of Nigerians, when a lot of people in Sokoto can’t even go to school because of 100,000 naira.”
“If he denies it, I will not only publish what he paid as tuition in those secondary schools, I will sue those schools to publish how much of the fees he has paid for all the time that they were there, including the other information which we don’t have. He should give us the universities they went to and spent four years. How much he has paid.”
The group chairman also assured Nigerians that the pump price of PMS would fall further, saying petrol would sell at no more than N740 per litre from Tuesday, beginning in Lagos.
This, he said, is because his refinery reduced the gantry price to N699 per litre.
He said the MRS filling stations would be the first to reflect the new price, maintaining that Nigerians would ultimately benefit from local refining, even as fuel importers incur losses.
The businessman noted that the company was working around the clock to ensure that recent reductions in the gantry price were fully reflected at the retail level.
“We will enforce the low price. We will make sure of that,” Dangote said.
The mogul also disclosed that the refinery had reduced its minimum purchase requirement from two million litres to 500,000 litres to enable more marketers, including members of the Independent Petroleum Marketers Association of Nigeria (IPMAN), to participate.
“So if you come to the refinery today, you will get PMS at N699 per litre,” he said.
He also highlighted quality differences, noting that products supplied through MRS and other off takers from the refinery were straight-run fuel, unlike blended products imported from overseas markets.
“Nigerians have a choice to buy better quality fuel at a more affordable price or to buy blended PMS at a higher rate. Importers can continue to lose, so long as Nigerians benefit,” he added.