The chairman of Dangote Industries Limited, Aliko Dangote, has alleged that Farouk Ahmed paid about $5 million in tuition fees to Swiss secondary schools for his children.

Ahmed is the current chief executive officer of the Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority.

Dangote made the remarks at a news conference at the Dangote Petroleum Refinery on Sunday, where he accused the NMDPRA executive of corruption and economic sabotage.

He alleged that Ahmed paid the stated sum for four of his children, covering a six-year period.

Although Dangote did not name the Swiss schools, he said the NMDPRA chief executive was living beyond his means and urged the federal government to investigate.

The group president added that such spending raises serious concerns about possible 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.

“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,” Dangote said.

Dangote said the NMDPRA chief should be allowed to clear his name through an investigation rather than being sacked outright.

He added that due process should be followed, but warned that he would pursue legal action against the school to compel disclosure of Ahmed’s payments if the allegation is denied.

“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 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,” he said.

The group chairman also assured Nigerians that the pump price of PMS would drop further, saying petrol would sell for no more than N740 per litre from Tuesday, starting in Lagos.

He said this would be driven by his refinery’s decision to cut the gantry price to N699 per litre.

According to him, MRS filling stations would be the first to reflect the new price, stressing that Nigerians would ultimately benefit from local refining, even as fuel importers incur losses.