Nigeria Awards $1.2bn Highway Job to Chagoury’s Hitech

NIGERIA · POWER PLAYERS

Key Facts

—The award: Nigeria’s Federal Executive Council approved about 1.7 trillion naira (~1.24 billion dollars) for a Kebbi State section of the Sokoto-Badagry superhighway.

—The builder: The contract went to Hitech Construction, the Chagoury Group company that is also building the Lagos-Calabar coastal highway.

—The corridor: The full route runs more than 1,000 km from Sokoto to Badagry, crossing seven states from the far northwest to the Lagos coast.

—The controversy: Critics cite a pattern of mega-contracts to Chagoury firms without open bidding, and revive his 2000 Geneva conviction over Abacha-linked funds.

—The context: The FEC had already approved about 2 trillion naira for other sections in 2025, alongside financing talks for the corridor.

—The stakes: The highway is a pillar of President Tinubu’s infrastructure legacy programme — and of the debate over how Nigeria awards it.

Nigeria has approved roughly 1.7 trillion naira, about 1.24 billion dollars, for the next stretch of the Sokoto-Badagry highway — and handed the work to Gilbert Chagoury’s Hitech Construction, reviving a familiar argument about how the country builds its biggest roads.

Inside the Sokoto-Badagry highway deal

The Federal Executive Council signed off on the contract for a section of the superhighway running through Kebbi State. Reporting by Billionaires.Africa put the award at about 1.24 billion dollars.

The builder is Hitech Construction Company, part of the Chagoury Group. It is the same firm delivering the Lagos-Calabar coastal highway, the administration’s other signature corridor.

The full Sokoto-Badagry route is planned at more than 1,000 kilometres, crossing Sokoto, Kebbi, Niger, Kwara, Oyo, Ogun and Lagos states. The council had already approved about 2 trillion naira for other sections in 2025.

Officials cast the section-by-section phasing as pragmatic engineering. Critics read it as momentum politics, each approval making the next harder to question.

Kebbi’s stretch also crosses terrain where farming and banditry intersect. Building there means contending with the insecurity that has plagued Nigeria’s northwest for years.

Why the name Chagoury raises temperatures

Gilbert Chagoury, the Lebanese-Nigerian billionaire behind the group, is one of the country’s most connected businessmen, the developer of Lagos’s Eko Atlantic city. He is also a lightning rod.

He was convicted in Geneva in 2000 over funds linked to the late dictator Sani Abacha, paid a settlement, and the record was later cleared under Swiss procedure. Critics revived that history within hours of the new award.

Civil-society outlets, including West Africa Weekly, also object that the era’s largest road contracts have gone to Chagoury-linked firms without open competitive bidding. The presidency has not publicly detailed the procurement path for the Kebbi section.

Hitech’s defenders answer that the firm delivers, pointing to Lagos roadworks and the Eko Atlantic seawall. Proven heavy-construction capacity is genuinely scarce in Nigeria.

Nigeria’s procurement rules do allow selective tendering in defined circumstances. Whether trillion-naira corridors fit those circumstances is the heart of the dispute.

The case for the road

Strip away the politics and the corridor answers a real need. Nigeria’s northwest — populous, agricultural and insecurity-prone — is poorly stitched to the ports and markets of the coast.

A modern highway from Sokoto to Badagry would cut haulage times across seven states and give farm produce a faster route to Lagos and to export. Road transport carries the overwhelming share of Nigerian freight.

The government frames the project, with the coastal highway, as the infrastructure legacy of President Bola Tinubu’s term. Construction jobs and cement demand arrive quickly; the corridor’s full value depends on finishing it.

For Sokoto and Kebbi, the promise is concrete: markets reached before produce spoils, and a coastline days closer. Big roads are abstractions until the first harvest travels one.

What to watch

Financing is the first question, as trillion-naira approvals still need funded schedules behind them. Nigeria’s fiscal space is tight, and earlier sections have leaned on financing facilities that take time to close.

Oil receipts, the treasury’s backbone, are under pressure from swelling global supply. Every soft month for crude makes the road bill heavier.

Delivery is the second. Nigerian mega-roads have a history of outliving the governments that launch them, and the Sokoto-Badagry corridor will span at least two political cycles.

Land, drainage and compensation disputes slow even well-funded stretches. The coastal highway’s own progress shows both the capacity and the friction involved.

The corridor would eventually link into the wider West African network, where Lagos–Abidjan planning inches ahead. Nigeria’s highways are regional infrastructure whether or not they are planned that way.

The third is precedent. How Nigeria awards, prices and audits its flagship roads will shape investor confidence in the whole infrastructure programme — which is precisely why this contract’s critics refuse to let the question drop.

Frequently asked questions

What did Nigeria approve for the Sokoto-Badagry highway?

The Federal Executive Council approved about 1.7 trillion naira — roughly 1.24 billion dollars — for a section of the superhighway in Kebbi State, awarding the work to Hitech Construction, part of Gilbert Chagoury’s group.

How big is the Sokoto-Badagry project overall?

The planned corridor runs more than 1,000 kilometres from Sokoto in the northwest to Badagry on the coast, crossing Sokoto, Kebbi, Niger, Kwara, Oyo, Ogun and Lagos states.

Why is the award controversial?

Critics note that major Tinubu-era road contracts, including the Lagos-Calabar coastal highway, have flowed to Chagoury-linked Hitech without open competitive bidding, and they point to Chagoury’s 2000 Geneva conviction over funds linked to Sani Abacha.

What does the government say?

The administration casts the superhighway as a flagship connectivity project linking the agricultural northwest to coastal ports, part of a wider legacy road programme.

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