Eshiorameh Sebastian, Abuja
Aliko Dangote, Africa’s wealthiest industrialist and Chairman of Dangote Industries Limited (DIL), has levelled a grave accusation of corruption against the Chief Executive of the Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority (NMDPRA), Farouk Ahmed.
Speaking in Lagos at the weekend, Mr Dangote alleged that the regulator paid a staggering $5 million in school fees to Swiss secondary schools for four of his children over a six-year period.
The billionaire, whose refinery has been at the centre of recent clashes with regulators over feedstock pricing and import licences, called for an immediate investigation by the Code of Conduct Bureau or another appropriate government body.
He framed the allegation as symptomatic of a systemic rot that is crippling the national economy.
“I think we are allowing Farouk to destroy the economy of Nigeria,” Mr Dangote stated bluntly.
“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.”
Drawing a contrast with his own choices, Mr Dangote questioned the propriety of such lavish expenditure by a public servant. “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.”
The core of his accusation hinges on a perceived mismatch between official income and lifestyle. “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,” he argued.
Mr Dangote insisted his call was not for Mr Ahmed’s dismissal but for accountability. “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.”
The industrialist issued a challenge, promising to escalate the matter if the allegations are denied. “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 allegation strikes at the heart of regulatory integrity in Nigeria’s critical downstream petroleum sector. Mr Dangote asserted that such expenditure “raises serious questions about potential conflicts of interest and the integrity of regulatory oversight.”
As of press time, the NMDPRA and Mr Farouk Ahmed have not issued an official response to the weighty allegations made by one of the nation’s most prominent business figures. The ball now lies in the court of the relevant anti-corruption agencies to determine if an investigation will be initiated.
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