Ship a Car to Nigeria from the USA

Almost everything shipped from the United States to Nigeria discharges at Lagos. But "Lagos" on a booking covers two separate marine terminals, Apapa and Tin Can Island, and they are not interchangeable. They sit on opposite sides of the same harbour, they are reached by different road approaches, and the agent who clears units at one is not automatically the agent who clears them at the other.

For a first-time shipper this matters for one blunt reason: the person collecting your vehicle needs to be told which terminal it landed at, and that is decided by the vessel, not by preference. For a dealer moving units monthly it matters more, because your clearing agent's efficiency at one terminal tells you nothing about the other, and a delivery order raised against the wrong terminal is days lost before anyone has looked at your paperwork.

Ask us which terminal the sailing you are booked on discharges at. It is a question with a real answer, and it is worth asking before the vessel leaves rather than after it arrives.

Nigeria closed its land borders to vehicle imports on 1 January 2017, and that closure has held for over nine years.

This kills a route that used to be common and is still quietly suggested: land the car at a neighbouring West African port because the sailing looks cheaper or sooner, then move it overland into Nigeria. That is no longer an import route. It is a vehicle stuck on the wrong side of a border.

So the practical rule for this lane is simple. The vessel that carries your car must be a vessel that calls at a Nigerian seaport. Anyone offering you a cheaper landing somewhere else with an overland leg attached is either working from pre-2017 habits or is not telling you what happens at the end of it.

This is a durable point rather than a volatile one, but it is under active repeal pressure, so it carries the same review cadence as everything else on this page.

We book Nigeria on both Sallaum Lines and Grimaldi. That is unusual: most of our West African lanes are effectively single-carrier, and Nigeria is not.

Having two carriers is useful, because it gives you two sets of sailing dates and two sets of loading terminals to work with. It also has a consequence people discover at the gate: the document set follows the terminal and the carrier, not the country. The same US city can appear twice in our records under two carriers with two different requirements, and the gate clerk applies the one in front of them.

The terminals below are the ones we load from, taken from our own loading ports record. Two of them, Newark and Jacksonville, exist twice in that record under different carriers, which is exactly where units get turned away.

On transit time, we publish nothing here on purpose. Carrier schedules move, and a transit range copied onto a marketing page is out of date within weeks. Ask us and we will give you the current sailing and cut-off from the carrier's own schedule for the vessel you are actually booked on. The cut-off is the date that decides whether your car sails, not the advertised departure.

Because Nigeria is served by both carriers, this lane is where our records disagree with themselves most usefully. Look at Jacksonville. On Sallaum the gate wants two copies of the title and five dock receipts. On Grimaldi, at the same street address, it wants five title copies and four dock receipts, and it wants a TWIC card as well.

That is not an error in our records. It is what the two terminals actually ask for, and it is the reason we refuse to publish a single tidy national checklist. Averaging those two rows into "bring several copies" would make the page neater and make it useless.

The same logic applies to gate access. A TWIC is legally required only for unescorted access to a secure area, and an escorted visitor may enter on ordinary photo identification. In practice escorting costs a terminal labour, so some gates require the card, charge for an escort, or decline owner drop-off altogether. Newark under Grimaldi does not require it. Jacksonville under Grimaldi does. If you were planning to deliver the car yourself, that single line decides whether you can.

Deliveries into the terminal are also a service we run, which is usually the simpler answer if you are one person with one car and no TWIC.

For a single running car going to Lagos, roll-on roll-off is what we would normally book. The vehicle is driven aboard, it does not need to be loaded into anything, and both carriers on this lane run RoRo tonnage.

There are three situations where we would suggest a container instead, and all three come up regularly on this lane:

1. You are shipping more than one vehicle at once. Dealers consolidating two or more units for the same Lagos consignee often do better in a container, and the units arrive together rather than potentially on separate vessels.
2. You are shipping parts, spares or a stripped unit alongside the car. RoRo carries the vehicle. Loose goods inside it are a different conversation, and packing them into a RoRo unit is how shipments get held.
3. The vehicle does not run, or you want it enclosed. A non-runner can still move, but the handling is different and it needs to be declared up front rather than discovered at the ramp.

Our RoRo versus container shipping guide covers the trade-off in full. It is worth reading before you decide, because the decision is easy to change now and expensive to change once a booking exists.

This is the single most important thing to understand about importing a vehicle into Nigeria, and it is the point where auction buyers most often get a shock.

Nigeria Customs assesses value from a VIN valuation database, not from your purchase invoice. The service assigns a value to the vehicle from its VIN, and the transaction price you actually paid is not a negotiating position. A car bought cheaply at a US salvage auction does not become a cheap car to clear. The bill is calculated against what the database says that vehicle is worth.

Two consequences follow, and they point in opposite directions for the two kinds of buyer:

• If you are an individual who found a bargain, budget from the vehicle's assessed value rather than from what you paid, and get that estimate before you bid rather than after you have won.
• If you are a dealer, the valuation basis is stable enough to model, which is useful. What is not stable is the scheme's status: VIN valuation has been suspended and reinstated more than once, most recently coming back into force around August 2025. Anyone quoting you a clearing cost should be telling you the date their information is from.

On the charges themselves we are going to be less specific than most pages you will read, and the reason is that the pages being more specific do not agree with each other. Nigeria's fiscal policy measures changed twice in 2026 alone. Nigeria Customs describes the reduction as a cut to the levy on used vehicles with the duty itself unchanged, while the Comptroller-General has publicly described it as a tariff cut. Those are different claims with different arithmetic, and we are not going to resolve a disagreement inside the Nigerian customs authority by picking whichever version suits a landing page. So we publish no single all-in percentage for this lane.

Two further items, both stated as shape rather than as figures, as at August 2026:

• A Green Tax Surcharge scaled to engine displacement was introduced in the April 2026 fiscal policy circular. Smaller engines are exempt and larger ones pay progressively more. If you are choosing stock for the Nigerian market, engine size is now a cost input and not only a fuel question.
• A charge assessed on the FOB value of imports was introduced in February 2025, suspended, reinstated in August 2025, then suspended again by ministerial direction in September 2025, while still being budgeted for. Treat it as suspended and treat its return as plausible.

And one thing we will not do at all: quote you a naira figure. Nigeria Customs does not set the exchange rate, and the applicable rate lives on the customs service's own platform. Any page giving you a converted naira landed cost is giving you a number that was wrong before it was published.

The vehicle age limit is the most consequential single fact on this page, because a buyer whose car cannot legally land has not lost a fee. They have lost the car.

The limit is reported as 12 years, reduced from fifteen in May 2022 and carried into the fiscal policy measures that followed. On a 12-year rule, a vehicle shipping in 2026 needs to be model year 2014 or newer. That is our understanding as last verified in August 2026.

Older guidance still in circulation states fifteen years. Confirm the model year with us before you commit money to a vehicle.

Nigeria operates a conformity assessment programme, SONCAP, administered through the Standards Organisation of Nigeria and its appointed inspection agents. Whether it applies to a complete used vehicle, as opposed to spare parts, is unsettled. The inspection agents' own scope documents differ: one lists used products excluding automobiles as exempt, which implies vehicles are in scope, and another lists only automotive spare parts as covered.

If you are shipping a complete vehicle to Lagos, raise it with us and with your Nigerian clearing agent before the unit is loaded, not while it is on the water.

• The US side is the same wherever the car is going. See how to export a car from the USA for the 72-hour rule, the ownership documents and the export filing.
• Buying at auction. We collect from IAA, Copart, dealerships, Ritchie Bros, Alex Lyon and Son and IronPlanet. See how we ship.
• The car does not run, or the title is a salvage title. See salvage and non-running vehicles. US Customs looks at the ownership document rather than the condition of the vehicle.
• Every terminal we load from, with hours and contacts, is on loading ports.