Nigeria awards $1.2 billion highway contract to Gilbert Chagoury, a billionaire convicted of laundering Abacha's stolen funds

Nigeria's Federal Executive Council has approved N1.7 trillion ($1.24 billion) for the construction of the Sokoto-Badagry Super Highway and handed the contract to Hitech Construction Company, a subsidiary of the Chagoury Group owned by Lebanese-Nigerian billionaire Gilbert Chagoury, who was convicted in Switzerland in 2000 of money laundering tied to funds stolen from Nigeria by the late military dictator Sani Abacha.

The 1,000-kilometre corridor is designed to link Sokoto, Kebbi, Niger, Kwara, Oyo, Ogun and Lagos states under President Bola Tinubu's Renewed Hope infrastructure agenda. FEC also approved a separate $1.2 billion financing facility for Section Two of the highway in Kebbi State. The combined approvals make the Sokoto-Badagry highway one of the most expensive single road infrastructure commitments in Nigerian history.

The contract award has reignited controversy about the relationship between Chagoury and Tinubu, a relationship that critics say has generated a pattern of major government contracts flowing to Chagoury-linked companies without public competitive bidding. The Sokoto-Badagry award follows the Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway, an estimated $11 to $13 billion project awarded to Hitech in 2024 without a public tender. In early 2025, ITB Construction Nigeria, another Chagoury Group subsidiary, was selected by FEC to refurbish the Tin Can and Apapa ports under a contract worth approximately N1.1 trillion ($803 million). In March 2026, Chagoury's ITB Nigeria won the construction contract for the $1 billion Snake Island Port concession. The cumulative value of Chagoury Group contracts awarded under the Tinubu administration has now crossed several trillion naira in less than three years.

The 2000 money laundering conviction sits at the centre of the controversy surrounding each new contract award. A Geneva court convicted Chagoury of money laundering and aiding a criminal organisation in connection with accounts through which transfers exceeding $120 million flowed to entities linked to the Abacha family. He was fined 600,000 Swiss francs and agreed to forfeit approximately $66 million to Nigeria. He also separately pleaded guilty in a US federal court to conspiracy to launder money linked to Abacha-looted funds and agreed to forfeit $66 million, which was subsequently repatriated to Nigeria. In 2018, he reached a civil settlement with US authorities following an investigation into illegal foreign campaign contributions to American political candidates across three election cycles. He entered a deferred prosecution agreement with the US Justice Department. Despite these proceedings, Chagoury has maintained he committed no wrongdoing.

The Tinubu administration has not only continued awarding contracts to Chagoury's companies but has elevated the billionaire's public status. In January 2026, on the occasion of his 80th birthday, President Tinubu conferred on Chagoury the Grand Commander of the Order of the Niger, Nigeria's second-highest national honour. Timi Frank, a former All Progressives Congress official, described the award as a dark moment that sent a dangerous signal that corruption and conflicts of interest were being normalised at the highest levels of Nigerian governance.

The conflict of interest allegations have a specific dimension that critics have pointed to repeatedly. Seyi Tinubu, the president's son, sits on the board of Hitech Construction, the same company that is winning billion-naira contracts from his father's government. An OCCRP investigation also revealed that Oluwaseyi Tinubu and Ronald Chagoury Jr, son of Gilbert's brother Ronald Chagoury, were joint shareholders in an offshore company incorporated in the British Virgin Islands. Neither party responded to requests for comment on those findings at the time of publication.

The relationship between Tinubu and the Chagoury family dates to at least 2007, when Tinubu's administration as Lagos State governor granted the Chagoury Group title to 10 million square metres of oceanfront land in Lagos. Hitech Construction is now building Eko Atlantic City on that land under a 78-year concession. The Chagoury Group's Nigerian footprint extends across Banana Island, the Eko Hotel and Suites in Lagos, the Hotel Presidential in Port Harcourt, flour mills in Kaduna, Ibadan and Benin, Tin Can Island's grain receiving facility, and a range of telecommunications, catering, insurance and manufacturing businesses. Gilbert Chagoury's net worth is estimated at approximately $4.2 billion, making him one of the wealthiest Lebanese-Nigerian businesspeople in the country.

Chagoury served as a close financial adviser to Abacha during the dictator's rule from 1993 to 1998, securing multiple no-bid infrastructure contracts for his group during that period and facilitating the movement of state funds into offshore accounts, according to investigators and court records. Following Abacha's death in 1998, Chagoury left Nigeria as the Obasanjo administration pursued Abacha-era looters. A 2004 EFCC sting operation attempted to detain him but he was alerted and his private jet departed before he could be apprehended. EFCC chairman Nuhu Ribadu subsequently described Chagoury as the lynchpin of the corruption that defined the Abacha era.

The Chagoury Group did not issue a public statement on the Sokoto-Badagry contract award. The Tinubu administration has not provided a public explanation for the award of consecutive major contracts to the same group without a publicly disclosed competitive bidding process.