Nigerian billionaire Gilbert Chagoury's Hitech just won the mining rights for the coastal highway it is already building

The Lagos State Government has approved dedicated mining sites at Ilamija, Kajola, Orimedu and Akodo for Hitech Construction Company, the contractor building the federal government's 750-kilometer Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway. Hitech is owned by the Chagoury Group, the Lagos-based conglomerate built by Nigerian-Lebanese billionaire Gilbert Chagoury and his brother Ronald, and the approval positions it to supply itself with the sand and gravel feeding into Nigeria's largest active infrastructure project.

A family business that now builds the road and digs up the materials

The approval was announced by Lagos Commissioner for Energy and Mineral Resources, Biodun Ogunleye, at the 2026 Ministerial Press Briefing in Alausa on May 19. He said dedicated borrow pits had been activated across the four sites to ensure steady material delivery along the Lagos-Calabar corridor, eliminating the supply disruptions that have slowed comparable Nigerian infrastructure projects in the past. The ministry said it is tracking 20 mineral resource sites across Lagos, 13 of them currently active.

The Chagoury Group, founded by Gilbert and Ronald in 1971, has built one of the most diversified private portfolios in Nigeria, spanning construction, real estate, flour milling, water treatment, hospitality, telecommunications and insurance. Hitech is the engineering arm, established as a division of the group in 1988, and is known for its coastal erosion work, the Bar Beach shoreline and the Eko Atlantic City reclamation. The broader Lagos infrastructure pipeline is now substantially Chagoury-built. ITB Nigeria, another group subsidiary, won the $1 billion construction contract for the Mediterranean Shipping Company's Snake Island container terminal in March, and is also handling the federal government's $1 billion Apapa and Tin Can Island ports modernization. Gilbert Chagoury, now 81 and based in Paris, was awarded the Grand Commander of the Order of the Niger by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu in January.

A contract that keeps getting bigger

The Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway, awarded to Hitech in 2024 under an Engineering, Procurement, Construction and Financing arrangement, has expanded significantly in scope and cost since the original contract was signed. The 750-kilometer route is designed to traverse nine coastal states from Lagos to Cross River and Akwa Ibom, with rail lines running through the middle of the main carriageways. Section I in Lagos was procured at N1.068 trillion, Section II at N1.6 trillion and Sections IIIA and IIIB jointly at N1.33 trillion. The Federal Ministry of Works has placed the total cost of the project at roughly N15 trillion, or about $10 billion at current exchange rates.

External financing is also arriving. The project has secured a $100 million allocation under a $266.7 million ECOWAS Bank for Investment and Development facility, with a separate $100 million approval in July 2025 for the 47.7-kilometer first Lagos section. Construction began in March 2024 and the first Lagos section was commissioned in May 2025, with work now active across Lagos, Cross River and Akwa Ibom states. The Lagos approvals extend beyond the mining sites themselves. The ministry has also deployed corridor sweepers known as Highway Doctors along the Ajah, Ibeju-Lekki and Epe axis to manage sand spillage, alongside 141 revenue consultants to strengthen sector compliance and oversight.

Why the borrow-pit approval matters

The mining-sites approval is what makes the contract structurally different from the typical Nigerian infrastructure deal. By granting Hitech the right to extract sand and gravel from designated state borrow pits, Lagos has effectively allowed the contractor to internalize the raw-material supply chain of the project it is already building. The Chagoury family now captures both ends of the value chain, the engineering and the input cost, in a country where federal infrastructure projects routinely stall on material disputes. Few private firms have held that level of operational control over a Nigerian megaproject of this scale.