What it actually costs to import a car to Nigeria
A car advertised at $50,000 in Atlanta does not arrive in Lagos costing $50,000. It arrives costing somewhere between $75,000 and $80,000. Most of that gap is not anyone's profit. It is government, freight, and the people who move things through a port. Here is every line of it.
The single most misunderstood line
Nigerian customs duty and levies have historically run at around 35% combined. Almost everybody knows that number. What far fewer people know is what it is charged on.
Duty is assessed on CIF: Cost, Insurance and Freight. Not on the vehicle price. That means the shipping you paid for and the marine cover you bought are themselves part of the taxable base. On an $85,000 car with $2,900 of freight and $340 of insurance, the base is $88,240 and the duty is roughly $30,900 rather than the $29,750 you would get from the vehicle alone.
It is not an enormous difference on one car. It is a meaningful one across several, and more importantly it tells you that the person quoting you has actually done this before.
Worked example
A 55% uplift on the US price. That ratio is fairly stable across the range. It compresses slightly on more expensive cars, because the fixed costs stop mattering as much.
The three that catch people out
1. Clearing is a range, not a price
Apapa and Tin Can clearing runs anywhere from $800 to $2,000 for a single vehicle. That spread is not really about the paperwork; it is about congestion, and about whether whoever is handling it has a working relationship at the port. Delay costs money in demurrage, so the gap between a good agent and a bad one is larger than the fee itself.
If someone quotes you a clearing figure at the very bottom of that range with no caveats, ask what happens if it lands higher, and who pays.
2. Outside Lagos costs days as well as money
Lagos metro delivery is $200 to $600 and usually happens a day or two after clearance. Abuja or Port Harcourt is $800 to $1,800, but the real cost is time, and only if the route is planned badly. If the transporter is only booked once the car has cleared, you have put two sequential processes end to end for no reason. Book it before the vessel docks and the inland leg overlaps the clearing rather than following it.
3. Policy moves between purchase and arrival
This is the genuinely uncontrollable one. Duty rates and age-of-import restrictions change with policy, sometimes at short notice, and a shipment priced at purchase can face a different schedule by the time it lands weeks later. Nobody can insure against this. What an importer can do is tell you before they buy, rather than after it arrives.
RoRo or container?
Roll-on roll-off is $1,500 to $3,000 and is completely normal. The vehicle is driven aboard and secured on a deck with hundreds of others. Container is more expensive but the car is sealed, never driven, and handled far less, which matters if a stone chip or a scuffed alloy would genuinely annoy you.
Our rule of thumb: RoRo below roughly $60,000, container above it, and container always for anything with delicate paint. A Manufaktur matte finish does not belong on an open deck.
What to ask anyone quoting you
- Is this quote all-in and delivered, or is it FOB with duty to follow?
- What base are you calculating duty on: the vehicle, or CIF?
- Who absorbs it if clearing lands at the top of the range?
- What happens if duty policy changes before the car ships?
- Is the inspection done by you, or by an independent party?
- Is last-mile delivery to my address included, or is this port pickup?
The answers matter more than the headline number. A lower quote that turns into a higher bill at Apapa is not a lower quote.
Run your own numbers
Our calculator uses the mid-point of every range above and lets you change the duty rate, the shipping method, the destination city and the brand.
Figures in this article are drawn from our working cost model and are illustrative. Duty rates and age-of-import rules change with policy. Confirm against the schedule current on the date of purchase.