If you are shipping household goods to Abuja and want to know what a transshipment leg adds to the bill, start with the honest finding. We went to the published tariff book of the Nigerian Ports Authority, which is the body that would charge such a thing, and read it on 25 October 2026. There is no transshipment tariff line in it. The book does not use the word in any spelling — not transshipment, not trans-shipment. So nobody should be quoting you a figure for what it adds, and this article will not invent one.
What can we help you with?
Three short questions, then just how to reach you. No account needed.
What the tariff book does contain, and whose bill it lands on
The Authority publishes definitions of two operations that move cargo between vessels — ship-to-ship, described as an offshore cargo operation involving two or more vessels, and midstream, where loading and unloading happen while the mother ship is still at sea with barges and lighters. Both are defined. Neither carries an amount, a unit or a currency. They are vocabulary in that book, not a price list.
The lines that do carry amounts and do touch the moving of a box sit somewhere else entirely:
- On-board shifting, under the Other Services and Shifting section: USD 40 per twenty-foot unit and USD 60 per forty-foot unit. These are vessel-side services. The tariff does not name a payer, but ship dues and shifting are charged on the vessel's movements, not on a consignment.
- The throughput fee, which the Authority's own definition says is payable by Terminal Operators: USD 25.70 per laden container on foreign import, USD 20.86 on foreign export, USD 5.61 for an empty container.
That is the whole answer to the headline question, and it matches what we found when we looked at the same question on the Saudi route. Moving a box from one ship to another is billed into the carrier's and the terminal operator's cost base. It reaches a household shipper, if it reaches them at all, folded into the line's freight rate or into a local charge the line names itself — not as a port authority invoice addressed to the consignee.
The one note that does name the consignee — and it says the opposite
There is exactly one explanatory note in that tariff book that puts a handling cost squarely on the cargo owner, and it is not about transshipment. It reads:
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%)
Read that carefully, because it is the published rule most likely to actually hit you. The charge arises when you ask for the cargo in a different form from the way it was discharged — unstuffed, split, moved to another yard. It is not a tariff with a number; it is cost plus forty per cent, which means the base is whatever the arrangement cost and you cannot budget it in advance. If a forwarder proposes to break your container somewhere other than where it landed, this is the clause to ask about in writing.
The naira figures in circulation are not Lagos figures
This one matters, and it is the reason we are leaving some measured numbers on the table. The Authority's tariff book does carry naira amounts for groupage containers — consolidated cargo, which is how a few boxes or half a container actually travel. Our own reference data holds them, measured on 6 October 2026. But they 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. Lagos is concessioned, and the same page sends you off to nine separate terminal operators for their own tariffs: Apapa Bulk Terminals, Five Star Logistics, Josepdam Port Service, Ports and Terminal Multiservice, Sifax Port and Cargo, TICT, Greenview Development, ENL Consortium and BUA Ports and Terminals. So a naira amount out of the Authority's book is not what a Lagos shipment pays, and we are not going to print it as though it were. That is a limitation of the source, measured on 25 October 2026, and not a judgment about the figures themselves.
Abuja is not in the tariff book at all
The second half of the title assumes the port charge runs through to an Abuja delivery. It does not. The Authority's tariff book names no inland dry port, no Abuja facility and no Kaduna facility. There is a Rail Charges section, but nothing that prices a corridor to the Federal Capital Territory.
The leg from a Lagos quay to an Abuja address is road haulage arranged commercially, and we found no authority publishing a rate for it. That is the single largest cost in the question the title asks, and it is unpublished. Ask your forwarder for it as a separate line, in writing, and ask who carries the risk if the truck is delayed.
Tema is a different country and a different authority
Routing through Tema does not simplify the comparison; it doubles it. Tema is in Ghana, under the Ghana Ports and Harbours Authority, and we could not read its published tariff: the tariff page returned an HTTP 500 server error when we tried it on 25 October 2026. So we have no sourced figure for what a Tema call costs, and we are not going to borrow one from a news report about a tariff change years ago.
There is a second, larger gap. Goods that land at Tema and continue to Abuja have to cross into Nigeria overland. The rules that govern that movement belong to the Nigeria Customs Service, and its website was measured unreachable on 24 October 2026, so we cannot quote its transit or transshipment provisions either. If a forwarder offers you a Tema routing, the questions to put in writing are: under which transit regime does the cargo move, who lodges the transit declaration, what security is posted at the border, and what happens to the exemption or the declared value if the cargo is opened in Ghana.
What we are deliberately not telling you
No number of days. We found no transit time published by either port authority or by the Customs Service, for either routing. A clearance window and a truck journey are not the same thing, and neither is published, so any day count you have been given is somebody's estimate. Ask whose, and ask what it is based on.
No saving. A saving is a difference between two prices, and we could read neither price: not a transshipment charge at the Nigerian Ports Authority, because there is no such line, and not a Tema figure, because that tariff would not load. An unsourced saving is worse than no figure, because it goes straight into a budget.
What expats should know
- The Nigerian Ports Authority publishes no transshipment tariff line. Treat any quoted amount for it as the forwarder's own number and ask for its basis.
- The charges that exist land on the carrier and the terminal operator. The throughput fee is payable by Terminal Operators, at USD 25.70 per laden import container.
- Cost plus forty per cent is the clause that reaches you, and only if you ask for delivery other than as landed. Get it quantified before you agree to it.
- The Authority's naira groupage lines are for non-concession areas such as Koko, Sapele and Brutu. For Lagos, the terminal operator's own tariff applies.
- The Lagos to Abuja leg is not in any tariff book we could read. Demand it as a separate written line.
- Tema means a second authority and a land border. We could not read either rulebook, so ask for the transit regime by name.
- Nobody published a transit time. Not in days, not in weeks.
- Value Added Tax applies to the Authority's import line items, but the tariff book states no rate, and it does not apply to exports, exempted cargo or approved free zone areas.
Where to check
The definitions, the shifting rates, the throughput fee, the delivery note, the non-concession heading and the list of terminal operators are all from the Nigerian Ports Authority's published port tariff, read on 25 October 2026. That book carries no effective date, so the date here is the day it was read, not the day it took effect; it also states that naira rates are adjusted every three years to the Nigerian consumer price index and dollar rates every two years to the United States index, so the amounts move without the page announcing it. The Ghanaian tariff we could not read is at the Ghana Ports and Harbours Authority. For the Nigerian transit and transshipment rules, and for duty, the Nigeria Customs Service is the only authority — reach it by telephone or in person, because its website did not answer us.
