The Minister of Solid Minerals Development Dele Alake yesterday said schools charging tuition fees in foreign currencies should be closed.

Alake made the call at the Nigeria Gold Day Celebration on the sidelines of the 10th edition of Nigeria’s Mining Week in Abuja. He criticised the practice and described it as a part of the leakages and loopholes in Nigeria’s economy threatening its growth.

The minister said: “I am still going to make a proposal to the Federal Executive Council that all those schools in Nigeria that are charging in foreign currencies should be closed. “These are some of these leakages and loopholes that we say exist in our economy that people do not really take these things very seriously.

“If you look at the foreign currency that goes into some of this, it’s humongous. “If your child is attending a school in Abuja or Lagos or somewhere in the country and is paying £10,000, or $10,000 as their fees, that means you will be looking for naira to go and buy dollars.

“Driving the value of dollar up, whereas this school is in Abuja in Nigeria, you can`t go to UK, establish a school and then be charging naira, it’s not done. “It’s only in this country that I see so many contradictory things that really demol- ishes the economy.”

According to him, we must begin to change our value system and orientation into things that are substantial, productive, constructive and regenerative for the progress in our nation. The minister said the Federal Government was introducing various measures, including digital mechanisms, to ensure that all leakages in Nigeria’s gold value chain were blocked and every loop- hole sealed.