Cardinal Toolworks

Country guide

Importing into Nigeria

Nigeria applies the ECOWAS Common External Tariff, then adds a set of small levies that most costings miss entirely. Two of them are charged on customs value and one is charged on the duty itself, so the order matters. VAT then sits on top of a base that already includes duty and levies.

Cost a Nigeria shipment now

The order of calculation

  1. Customs value (CIF). Goods value, international freight and insurance, converted at the exchange rate customs applies on the day of the declaration — not the rate your bank gave you. A rate move between order and clearance changes every figure below it.
  2. Customs duty. Customs value multiplied by the ECOWAS CET rate for your tariff line. The band depends on the specific national tariff line, not the chapter, and concessions exist for some raw materials and machinery.
  3. ECOWAS Trade Liberalisation Scheme levy (ETLS). A small percentage of customs value, commonly 0.5%, on goods originating outside the ECOWAS region.
  4. Comprehensive Import Supervision Scheme fee (CISS). A percentage of the value declared on the Form M, commonly 1%, tied to the pre-arrival documentation process.
  5. Surcharge. A port development surcharge calculated as a percentage of the customs duty — commonly 7% of duty, not of value. Getting this base wrong is a common source of understatement.
  6. VAT at 7.5%. Charged on a base that includes customs value plus duty plus the levies and surcharge. Even where you can recover it, you finance it before the goods move.
  7. Terminal, clearing and inland costs. Shipping line charges, terminal handling, agent fees, demurrage and storage, and trucking from Apapa, Tin Can or Onne to your warehouse.

Where importers get caught

  • Using your own bank rate instead of the customs exchange rate on the declaration date.
  • Applying the surcharge to customs value rather than to duty.
  • Treating the ETLS and CISS levies as rounding errors — together they move a container by a real amount.
  • Assuming a duty band from a six-digit HS code when the Nigerian tariff line decides the rate.
  • Leaving demurrage out of landed cost when clearance runs long.

An illustrative worked example

A trader imports one 40-foot container of building fixtures. Goods value US$40,000, ocean freight US$3,500, insurance US$400. Customs value is US$43,900.

At a 20% duty rate, duty is US$8,780. ETLS at 0.5% of value adds US$219.50 and CISS at 1% adds US$439. A 7% surcharge on duty adds US$614.60.

VAT at 7.5% on US$53,953.10 — value plus duty, levies and surcharge — is US$4,046.48. Terminal handling, agent fees and trucking of US$3,200 bring the landed total to about US$61,199, roughly 53% above the supplier invoice.

The figures above are illustrative and use round duty bands to show the method. They are not a quotation and not a customer result.

Verify before you commit

Cardinal Toolworks does not publish live tariff rates, and no honest tool should. Rates, levies, exemptions and minimum charges change, and origin changes them again. Confirm your tariff line and the current rates with Nigeria Customs Service or your licensed clearing agent, record the source and the date, and enter those figures into the calculator. TrueCost keeps that verification record on the report.

The method itself is the same everywhere: how to calculate landed cost, what belongs in a VAT or GST calculation base, and how an HS code decides a duty rate.

Cost a shipment free