Which certificate does my product need to enter Nigeria?

Which certificate does my product need to enter Nigeria: SONCAP, NAFDAC or NCC type approval? The routes, the published fees and the penalties.

Which certificate your product needs is the question that decides whether your container clears or sits. Nigeria runs three separate regimes, each with its own agency, its own cost and its own penalty for arriving without it, and nobody tells an importer which one applies until the goods are already at Apapa. This page is the decision, in order, with the published fees.

So which certificate does my product need? #

Is it food, drug, cosmetic, chemical, detergent, medical device or packaged water? Then it is NAFDAC, and the product must be registered before it is imported, not after.

Is it a SIM enabled communications device? Then it needs type approval from the Nigerian Communications Commission, on top of anything else.

Is it any other manufactured product? Then assume SONCAP until you confirm otherwise.

Those three are not alternatives. A cosmetic in an electrical applicator can touch two of them.

SONCAP: the default for manufactured goods #

The Standards Organisation of Nigeria's own position is that all products are regulated under SONCAP except those on the exemption list. The categories the accredited inspection firms name include electrical and electronic products, automotive products and tyres, chemicals, mechanical products and gas appliances, toys and childcare products, furniture, paper and stationery, safety equipment, building materials, textiles and footwear.

The exemption list, per SON: food products, drugs and medicines, medicals other than equipment and machines, chemicals used as raw material by bona fide manufacturers for food or medicine, military wares, contraband, used products other than automobiles, and personal effects.

Note the logic. Things exempt from SONCAP are mostly exempt because another agency regulates them, not because they are unregulated.

The routes and the fees, from SON's own page:

A new product fee of 350 dollars and an amendment fee of 100 dollars also apply. Every route requires a certificate of conformity from an accredited firm before SON issues the SONCAP certificate itself.

The penalty for arriving without one: 20 percent of the CIF value or 2 million naira, whichever is higher. That is SON's published wording, and "whichever is higher" is the part people misquote.

What changed in 2026: SON migrated SONCAP and import permit processing to the National Single Window platform with effect from 27 March 2026. Applications are now initiated there rather than through separate SON channels. Our SONCAP page has the detail.

NAFDAC: slower, and it must come first #

NAFDAC regulates drugs, food, cosmetics, medical devices, chemicals, detergents and packaged water. Two rules matter more than everything else.

Registration precedes import. A regulated product may not be imported before it is registered. There is no registering it after it arrives.

Only the registrant may import. NAFDAC's own food clearance guideline states that importations are restricted to the registered sources named on the registration certificate. So if a Chinese brand is already registered to another Nigerian company, you cannot import it yourself without a letter of authorisation from that company. This one fact reshapes many business plans.

Registration of an imported cosmetic officially takes 120 working days from acceptance of the submission, with the clock stopping whenever NAFDAC raises a query, and a registration lasts five years. The documents include a power of attorney from the manufacturer notarised in China, and a certificate of manufacture and free sale authenticated by the Nigerian Embassy or High Commission in the country of origin, which for Chinese goods means the Nigerian mission in China.

Our cosmetics page walks the whole route, and our NAFDAC page covers the wider position.

NCC type approval: phones and anything with a SIM #

Type approval is mandatory for telecommunications equipment under the Nigerian Communications Act 2003, and it applies to mobile phones.

What changed in 2026: the Commission has begun a phased rollout of a device management system built on a central equipment identity register, tracking device IMEI numbers. Reporting in September 2026 described the first phase as onboarding existing dealer stock and registering devices imported from that point, with the Commission's position that SIM enabled devices must be registered before sale and unregistered devices will not be permitted to operate on Nigerian networks.

It is a phased rollout rather than a single switch, so the position will keep moving. Our phone import page is written around it and says plainly what is settled and what is not.

The order to do this in #

1. Check the prohibition list first. A certificate is irrelevant if the goods may not enter at all. Our prohibited imports page has it.
2. Identify the HS code of your product, because that is what decides the regime and the duty. Our duty page explains HS codes.
3. Ask the agency, in writing, before you order. SON will give a ruling on whether an HS code is regulated. NAFDAC will tell you whether a product category needs registration.
4. Build the certificate cost into the landed cost, not into the surprise column. Our landed cost page has the arithmetic.
5. Get the certificate before the goods ship, because SONCAP is an offshore programme: the inspection happens in China, before loading.

That last point is the one that catches people. SONCAP is not something you sort out when the container lands. The conformity assessment is done at origin, and a shipment that sailed without it arrives already in penalty.

When you cannot tell #

Ask. SON's public FAQ does not settle every product, and NAFDAC's definition of a cosmetic, which covers substances applied to the body, does not obviously settle whether a wig or a hair extension needs registration. We could not find a NAFDAC ruling on that either way, and we are not going to guess about something that decides whether a container clears.

Write to the agency, get the answer in writing, and keep it. It costs a stamp and it is the cheapest insurance in this business.

First published 20 Sep 2026. Last checked 20 Sep 2026 by The ChinaBridge desk. Something here out of date? Tell us in the comments and we will fix it.