President Bola Tinubu has asked the Senate to confirm new chief executives for the Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority and the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission following the resignation of the heads of both agencies.
The request was conveyed in separate letters sent to the Senate on Wednesday, December 17.
Farouk Ahmed resigned as Chief Executive of the Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority, while Gbenga Komolafe stepped down as Chief Executive of the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission. Both officials were appointed in 2021 by former President Muhammadu Buhari after the enactment of the Petroleum Industry Act.
The development was confirmed in a statement issued by the President’s Special Adviser on Information and Strategy, Bayo Onanuga.
The resignations come amid public allegations by Aliko Dangote, chairman of the Dangote Group, who accused Ahmed of spending about five million dollars on the secondary school education of his children in Switzerland.
In an advertorial published in BusinessDay, Dangote said Ahmed paid the amount to educate four of his children over a six year period.
On Monday, December 15, Dangote alleged that Ahmed “paid $5 million” to Swiss secondary schools for his children’s education, describing the action as “economic sabotage and corruption”.
In the advertorial, Dangote named the children as Faisal Farouk, Farouk Junior, Ashraf Farouk and Farhana Farouk. He said the schools they attended included Montreux School, Aiglon College, Institut Le Rosey and La Garenne International School.
Dangote said the estimated annual cost of tuition, airfare and upkeep per child was about 200,000 dollars, amounting to 800,000 dollars per year for the four children.
According to him, the total living expenses and air travel per child over six years amounted to 1.2 million dollars, bringing the total for all four children to 4.8 million dollars. He said the overall cost of tuition and upkeep reached approximately five million dollars.
The billionaire businessman also raised questions about the tertiary education expenses of Ahmed’s children, stating that tuition, upkeep, airfare and related costs averaged about 125,000 dollars per year over four years.
“This adds up to $500,000 for four years per child, totalling $2 million for all of them,” Dangote said. He further claimed that one of the children, Faisal, completed an MBA at Harvard University in 2025, saying, “Faisal just finished the 2025 Harvard MBA at $150,000 and $60,000 for upkeep, tickets and other incidentals. Total equals $210,000 spent in 2025 for Faisal’s MBA.”
Dangote said Nigerians deserve to know the source of the funds, adding that the spending was carried out by a public officer “while many parents in his home state of Sokoto cannot afford to pay N10,000 school fees for their children and wards”.
