Comparing Three Freight Quotes for Nigeria: Which Lines Are Real

Comparing three freight quotes for a move to Nigeria is a process question, not a price question, and that is a relief: it means you do not need anybody's invented figures to do it well. This article was held because the version before it contained a comparison table that no forwarder ever issued, a per-box air freight price lifted from an online calculator, and a duty and tax rate with no source behind it. All three are gone. What replaces them is the thing that actually makes three quotes comparable: knowing which line items exist, which authority publishes each one, and whose bill each sits on.

Start by making the three quotes describe the same shipment

Quotes become incomparable long before anyone adds up the numbers, because the three forwarders are quoting three different jobs. Fix that first by sending all three the same brief, and insisting that each one answers in the same shape:

• Where it starts and where it stops. Door to door, door to port, port to port or terminal to terminal. A cheap quote that stops at the quay is not cheaper.
• Whether Abuja is included or excluded. The inland leg is the item most often left out, and it is not in any port tariff.
• On what the price is calculated — gross weight, volumetric weight, container unit, or per barrel.
• Which charges are estimates and which are fixed. Ask them to mark each line. A line that cannot be fixed should say so.
• Who lodges the customs declaration, and what happens to the price if the declared value is queried.
• What insurance is included, on what basis, and with what excess.

What the port authority publishes, and three warnings about it

The Nigerian Ports Authority publishes a tariff book, and it is the right place to see which port line items are real. Our own reference data holds a set of its cargo-side amounts, measured on 6 October 2026. Before any of them is useful to you, three things have to be said, and they come from the measurement itself:

• This is the Authority's own share and not the whole port bill. The amounts look too small to be real precisely because they are only one party's slice. The terminal operators publish a separate tariff of their own, linked from the same page, and that is where most of what a shipment pays actually sits.
• The tariff book carries no effective date. The date attached to these figures is the day the page was read, not the day the rates took effect.
• The amounts move on a schedule, not on an announcement. The regulation states that naira-denominated rates are adjusted every three years in line with the Nigerian consumer price index, and dollar-denominated rates every two years in line with the United States index.

There is a fourth caution we measured ourselves on 25 October 2026, and it is the sharpest one. The naira groupage container lines in that book sit under the heading DELIVERY CHARGES AT NON CONCESSION/NPA AREAS (KOKO, SAPELE, BRUTU, etc.). That heading does not name Lagos, Apapa or Tin Can. So those amounts are a useful example of what kind of line exists, and they are not the price of a Lagos shipment. If your quote has a line called "port charges" for a Lagos arrival, it is the terminal operator's tariff you need, not the Authority's.

The port line items that should appear separately in a quote

These are the Authority's published cargo-side amounts from our reference data, measured on 6 October 2026, with every caution above still attached:

• Customs examination or documentation through the port: NGN 1,400 per document. Both the direct route — straight from ship to truck — and the indirect route through the shed are priced the same, which is unusual in this book and worth noting, because every other pair differs.
• Rent on general cargo in a shed or warehouse: NGN 6 per ton per day on import, against NGN 4 on export.
• Rent on general cargo in the stacking area: NGN 3 per ton per day on import, against NGN 2 on export.
• The first three days are free, counted from the completion of discharge. A shipment collected inside that window pays no rent at all, and a quote that shows a storage estimate without naming the free period is telling you less than the tariff does.

Two structural points come with those figures. The Authority charges per ton and per container, not per cubic metre, so a quote expressed in cubic metres is the forwarder's unit and not the port's. And import is dearer than export on every one of these lines, which is a quick sanity check: if a quote shows you an export rate for an inbound move, it has been copied from the wrong column.

The charge that is not a tariff, and the one that falls on somebody else

Two more published items change how you read a quote.

First, the Authority's note on delivery: If a Consignee/Agent wants to take delivery of cargo in a way other than the way it landed, the arrangement/cost should be borne by the Consignee/Agent (Cost + 40%). This is not a fixed amount. If a forwarder plans to unstuff your container away from where it landed, that is a cost plus forty per cent arrangement, and it belongs in the quote as a named risk rather than as a round number.

Second, the throughput fee, which the Authority's definition makes payable by Terminal Operators: USD 25.70 per laden container on foreign import. That is a real cost in the chain that is not a line on your invoice. It is worth knowing only so that you recognize it when a forwarder passes it through under a name of its own — at which point you can ask what it is and who it is owed to.

What the forwarders themselves publish

Price lists from forwarders are weaker sources than a tariff book, but two of them agreeing is better than one. Measured on 6 October 2026 across two UK forwarders' published cargo price lists for the Nigeria route:

• Documentation and administration charge: GBP 20 per shipment. Sigmastart calls it a documentation and administration charge; Cargo Afrik calls it a handling charge for every shipment. Both name GBP 20. This is the forwarder's charge for paperwork — it is not a government fee and not import duty, and a quote that bundles it into "customs" is mislabeling it.
• Barrel shipping: GBP 125 per barrel, the median of two published prices of GBP 120 and GBP 130. The empty barrel is not included in that price.

A sample of two price lists is a sample of two. Use these as a check on whether a quoted paperwork line is in the published range, not as a market rate.

Duty, tax and the figures we removed

Here is the part of the old draft that had to go, and why. It stated a duty band and an import tax rate as settled fact. We cannot source either. Duty and tax on imports are the Nigeria Customs Service's to publish, and its website was measured unreachable on 24 October 2026. Drafts and relocation guides routinely print a duty range of 0 to 35 per cent and a value added tax rate of 7.5 per cent; those may well be right, but we did not read them at the Service, so they are not in this article.

What we can tell you from the port tariff is narrower and still useful. The Authority's Value Added Tax section states that VAT applies to the total of all its import revenue line items and services, and that it does not apply to exports, exempted cargo or government-approved free zone areas. It states no rate. So the published position is that tax attaches to the port's own charges, with the rate to be confirmed at the Customs Service — and a quote that shows duty and tax as a single confident figure is showing you an estimate.

The same goes for air freight. The figure the old draft carried, a box price of about 227 dollars from an online calculator, is not a source: a calculator output is a quotation engine's answer to one set of inputs on one day, with no published tariff behind it. If you want an air freight number, get it from the three forwarders you are already asking, on the same brief, and compare those.

What expats should know

• Send all three forwarders one identical brief. Different scopes, not different prices, are why quotes disagree.
• Insist each line is marked fixed or estimated. That single column does more work than a total.
• Port charges for Lagos come from the terminal operator, not from the Nigerian Ports Authority's own naira table, which covers non-concession areas.
• NGN 1,400 per document is the Authority's examination and documentation line, identical on both routes, measured 6 October 2026.
• Three days of free storage run from the completion of discharge. After that, NGN 6 per ton per day in a shed on import and NGN 3 in the stacking area.
• GBP 20 is a forwarder's paperwork charge, named by two independent publishers. It is not a government fee.
• Cost plus forty per cent applies if you take delivery other than as landed. Ask for the base before you agree.
• Do not accept a duty and tax figure without its source. We could not reach the Customs Service, and neither can your forwarder's spreadsheet.

Where to check

The port line items, the delivery note, the throughput fee, the free period and the Value Added Tax wording are from the Nigerian Ports Authority's published port tariff, read on 25 October 2026, with the cargo-side amounts held in our own reference data as measured on 6 October 2026. The forwarder charges are from two UK forwarders' published cargo price lists for the Nigeria route, a sample of two, measured on the same date. For duty rates and the import tax rate, the Nigeria Customs Service is the only authority, and we could not reach it — ask it directly rather than accepting a quoted band.