President Bola Tinubu has awarded another enormous project to his longtime ally Gilbert Chagoury, entrusting the reconstruction of the nation’s trillion naira-worth seaport to a convicted money-launderer who was once banned from the U.S. due to his nefarious activities. 

Mr Chagoury, whose Hi-Tech company was awarded an $11 billion Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway project in 2024 to the chagrin of Nigerians, has bagged yet another juicy contract to refurbish the commercial city’s two major ports, Tin Can and Apapa. 

Despite lacking major experience in seaport construction, ITB Construction Nigeria Limited, a subsidiary of Chagoury Group, was selected by the nation’s Federal Executive Committee to execute the project in February,  according to a report by African Intelligencer, a Paris-based outlet.

The project, estimated to cost $700 million, will be financed by loans from Nigeria’s Citi Bank and UK’s Export Finance. Funds will not be an issue as international companies are falling over themselves, offering millions of dollars to be part of the project.

APM Terminals, a Maersk subsidiary, has already offered to invest $500 million in the contract, which covers 70 per cent of the total cost of the port’s renovation. 

Afreximbank has similarly signalled interest and offered to be on the project. But it is up to the Nigerian Ports Authority, led by Abubakar Dantsoho, to select partners and sponsors for the project.

Mr Chagoury, a Nigerian-Lebanese business mogul who moved Sani Abacha’s billion-dollar loot and became a target of American authorities for bribing politicians and financing suspected terrorists, enjoys a different reality in Nigeria where his longtime friendship with Mr Tinubu continues to yield profitable deals with his companies being spoon-fed juicy contracts without having to bid.

The Nigerian government, according to Africa Intelligencer, “duly chose Chagoury Group, and its subsidiary ITB Nigeria headed by Ramzi Chidiac” at the president’s say-so in early February.

Mr Chagoury, despite being a naturalised citizen, wields significant influence in the nation’s economic sector and has become some sort of a middleman who helped to broker deals between potential international investors and the Nigerian government.

He owns the Eko Hotel and is a key sponsor of the Eko Atlantic project. He has long maintained no wrongdoing in corruption and terrorism financing charges.

Mr Chagoury, 79, arranged a meeting for Dubai-based DP World representatives to meet the Nigerian president and Minister of Maritime and Blue Economy, Adegboyega Oyetola, on February 26.

Mr Chagoury, with a corruption-tainted history, was convicted by the U.S. government in 2000 for money laundering. 

Peoples Gazette in 2021 reported that he was fined $1.8 million by the U.S. Department of Justice for colluding with other unscrupulous persons to make illegal campaign donations to four candidates between June 2012 and March 2016.

The Nigerian government harboured its reservations about Mr Chagoury as then anti-graft chair Nuhu Ribadu said it was nearly impossible to investigate corruption without looking at the businessman. 

“You couldn’t investigate corruption without looking at Chagoury,” Mr Ribadu said in a 2010 PBS interview in California. The controversial businessman denied the allegations.

Mr Ribadu now serves as the National Security Adviser, but it appears Mr Chagoury’s close friendship with Mr Tinubu has burnished his reputation from being corruption-tainted to being an untouchable confidant of the president.