Business mogul Aliko Dangote has criticized the Chief Executive of the Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority (NMDPRA), Farouk Ahmed, over excessive spending on his children’s education and mismanagement in Nigeria’s oil sector.
Dangote’s words:
“Nigeria is supposed to be the refining hub of not even West Africa, but of the sub-Saharan Africa region. We have the crude and we have the refineries. If our own continues to work, we have the NNPC refineries. A million tons can feed the entire West Africa and Central Africa. And I don’t know why we should continue to allow some corrupt government officials to try and destroy the whole sector of the economy.”
On Ahmed’s children’s education, Dangote stated:
“I’ve actually had people making complaints about a regulator who put his children in secondary school and that secondary school education, which is six years for four of them, cost Nigeria five million dollars. Even my own children, they didn’t go to those schools; my children went to Nigerian secondary school.”
He added:
“Today, as we speak, the authority’s chief executive, Mallam Farouk, has four children that he educated in Switzerland at the cost of five million dollars for their secondary school education alone, not university.”
Dangote questioned the fairness of such spending:
“His income does not match paying this kind of fees. At least, even if it was me paying five million dollars for six years for my four children, the tax man has to look at my taxes. We won’t allow this kind of thing to continue. People who have done something wrong must be prosecuted.”
He contrasted this with the struggles of ordinary Nigerians:
“Some children from Sokoto are struggling to pay 100,000 naira as school fees for secondary school. The man must come out and explain to Nigerians how he paid five million dollars for six years for his children’s education. We can’t allow this to continue.”
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