Aliko Dangote, chairman of Dangote Industries Limited (DIL), has made explosive allegations against Farouk Ahmed, chief executive officer of the Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority (NMDPRA), claiming that he paid about $5 million in school fees to Swiss secondary schools for his children.

Dangote made the claims on Sunday during a news conference at the Dangote Petroleum Refinery, accusing the NMDPRA boss of corruption, abuse of office and economic sabotage.

According to the billionaire industrialist, Ahmed spent the alleged amount on the secondary education of four of his children over a six-year period. Although he did not name the Swiss schools involved, Dangote said the expenditure was far beyond what a public official should ordinarily afford, urging the federal government to launch a full investigation.

He said the scale of the spending raises serious concerns about conflicts of interest and the integrity of regulatory oversight in Nigeria’s downstream petroleum sector.

“I’ve had people 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.

Dangote contrasted Ahmed’s alleged actions with his own choices, noting that his children attended secondary schools in Nigeria.

“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 secondary school education alone, not university,” he said, adding that one of the children reportedly went on to study at Harvard University.

He questioned how a public servant’s income could sustain such expenses, describing the situation as symptomatic of a system being undermined by corruption.

Despite the severity of the allegations, Dangote said Ahmed should not be summarily dismissed but given the opportunity to clear his name through a proper investigation.

“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,” he said.

Dangote further warned that if Ahmed denies the allegations, he would take legal action against the Swiss schools to compel them to disclose payment records.

“If he denies it, I will publish what he paid as tuition, and I will sue those schools to release how much he paid during the entire period,” he added.

Beyond the allegations, Dangote also announced further reductions in the pump price of petrol, assuring Nigerians that PMS would sell for no more than N740 per litre from Tuesday, starting in Lagos. This, he said, follows a reduction in the refinery’s gantry price to N699 per litre.

He disclosed that MRS filling stations would be the first to reflect the new price and reiterated that local refining would ultimately benefit Nigerians, even if fuel importers incur losses.

The businessman also revealed that the refinery had reduced its minimum purchase requirement from two million litres to 500,000 litres to accommodate more marketers, including members of the Independent Petroleum Marketers Association of Nigeria (IPMAN).

Dangote added that products supplied from his refinery were straight-run fuel, unlike blended imported PMS, insisting that Nigerians now have the option of buying higher-quality fuel at lower prices.

The latest allegations deepen the long-running rift between Dangote and petroleum sector regulators, a dispute that has continued to draw national attention.