Import from China to Nigeria: which checks are yours, and which one is ours.

The registrations and approvals that must exist on your side before anything ships

Form M. The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) requires an import declaration form, processed through your authorised dealer bank, for most commercial imports. It must be approved before your bank can remit foreign exchange for the transaction. The form captures the value, HS classification and terms of the transaction. Some categories are exempt from Form M; confirm with your bank which regime applies to your goods.

SONCAP product certificate (for regulated products). The Standards Organisation of Nigeria Conformity Assessment Programme covers a published list of regulated products. If your goods fall on that list, an accredited inspection body in the country of export must issue a Product Certificate before shipment. On arrival in Nigeria the SONCAP Certificate is issued against that pre-shipment certificate. Products outside the regulated list do not need it, but clearing them still requires documentary proof that they are outside scope.

NAFDAC registration (for food, drugs, cosmetics, chemicals). If your import falls within NAFDAC-regulated categories, the product itself must be registered with the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control before it can be cleared. This is separate from SONCAP and has its own timeline.

Confirm each of these with your bank (Form M), SON (SONCAP), and NAFDAC respectively. The requirements are theirs to state, not ours. What we can tell you is that none of them says anything about whether the company at the other end of the transaction is real.

Whether your product needs SONCAP, and why that certificate points at the Chinese factory

SON publishes a list of regulated products that require conformity assessment before entry. Where your product falls on that list, an accredited inspection body must inspect the goods at the point of manufacture and issue a Product Certificate. That means an inspector visits the Chinese factory, not your office in Lagos or Kano.

The part that matters for supplier selection: the Product Certificate is issued against a named manufacturer at a specific address. When a Chinese supplier sends you a SONCAP certificate, that document is about a Chinese manufacturing entity. It is not about you, and it is not automatically about the company that will issue your proforma invoice.

Two ordinary situations look identical in an email. In the first, the factory holds the certificate and invoices you directly. In the second, a trading company forwards a certificate belonging to a factory it buys from, and your compliance file now rests on a document about someone else. Both look the same in a WhatsApp forward. They differ in whether the name on the certificate matches the name on your contract, your proforma and your payment instruction, and those names are checkable.

The regulated product list changes. SON periodically adds and removes product categories. Whether your specific product is currently on the list is a question for SON or a compliance consultant, not for a general guide.

Duty, tariff classification and clearance: not our lane

Nigeria applies the ECOWAS Common External Tariff (CET) plus surcharges and levies that vary by product and by gazette notice. The effective duty on your specific import depends on the HS classification, whether a supplementary levy applies, and the Import Adjustment Tax or Comprehensive Import Supervision Scheme fee in force on the day of entry.

Ask your clearing agent for a landed-cost estimate against the actual HS code, and treat the classification itself as a decision worth getting right early. The Nigeria Customs Service is the authority on classification, not a supplier's quotation. A supplier telling you the duty rate is a supplier guessing about your country.

We do not clear customs, we do not quote freight, and we do not calculate duty. A page that pretended otherwise would be the least useful thing on this site.

The China-side check that is actually ours

Everything above is about Nigeria. This part is not, and it is the part your clearing agent and your freight forwarder both leave to you.

A Chinese company exists in a state register under one exact Chinese name and one 18-character Unified Social Credit Code. The English name on an Alibaba storefront, a WhatsApp message or a proforma invoice is a trading style. It is not registered and cannot be searched. So the first question is mechanical: does the name and code they gave you resolve to a live registered entity, and is that entity registered for the activity you are buying?

The second question is the one that decides whether your money is recoverable: does the bank account you have been asked to pay belong to that same registered company. When the beneficiary is a different company, an individual, or an account in a third jurisdiction, that is not automatically fraud, but it is always something to resolve before the wire, because an international transfer is not reversible on request.

Both checks return a record with a source and a query date. Neither is an opinion about whether the supplier is good to work with.

The step you cannot take back

The wire transfer. Once an international wire lands, your leverage is whatever the contract and the relationship give you, and on a first order that is usually very little. Everything you intend to verify about the counterparty should happen before this, not after.

Payment by Letter of Credit offers a degree of conditionality that a wire does not, but an L/C is still issued against documents. If the documents name a different entity from the one you think you contracted with, the protection is weaker than it appears. Confirm the names first.

If a supplier explains a beneficiary mismatch with urgency, a frozen account, a regulatory issue, a "temporary" alternative: treat the urgency itself as the reason to slow down.

What this page deliberately does not tell you

Which products are profitable to import. That is a market question about your channel and your margins, and anyone answering it from a distance is guessing.

Duty rates, freight quotes and transit times. Country-specific, date-specific, and better sourced from your clearing agent and forwarder this week than from any guide.

Whether the goods will be any good. No register holds product quality. It comes from an approved sample and an inspection against a written specification.

Whether a certificate is genuine. We verify the Chinese entity named on it against the Chinese public record. Confirming that a SONCAP Product Certificate is current and covers the product is a question for SON.

Before the transfer: the four names that must match

Every importer has to answer one question that no clearing agent and no freight forwarder will answer for them: who exactly am I paying, and is that the same party I contracted with? Put four names side by side, literally as written, before any deposit leaves:

A mismatch is not proof of fraud. It is routine for a mainland factory to invoice through an affiliated trading company, often a Hong Kong one. There is a structural reason for it: across all 264 registered Chinese manufacturers checked, 25.4% carried no import-export wording in their registered business scope. One in four cannot straightforwardly export in its own name, so the money goes to a different legal person. What matters is whether that relationship was disclosed and documented before the price was agreed.

Where Nigeria adds a layer. If your product requires SONCAP, you now have a fifth name to align: the manufacturer named on the Product Certificate. That entity must be the one actually producing the goods, not the trading company reselling them. A certificate naming a factory you are not contracting with does not cover your consignment.

Free tool that runs the comparison in your own browser and transmits nothing: four-party comparison. To confirm the registered identity behind any of those names: how to search the Chinese registry, or check an 18-character code locally with the USCI check-digit tool.

Registry answers age. In the same 264-company census, 54.9% amended their registration within twelve months: a check from last quarter does not support today's transfer. We do not apply for SONCAP, calculate duty, clear customs or confirm bank-account ownership; those sit with SON, your clearing agent and your bank respectively.

If you already have a supplier in front of you

Ask for a photograph of the business licence (营业执照) to get the exact registered Chinese name and the 18-character code, then check them against the public record rather than against the document you were sent. It takes minutes and it is the cheapest step in the whole sequence.

Run the free registry check

Every line we deliver names its source and the date it was queried, and states what it cannot show. We verify records; we do not certify suppliers, and we are not a substitute for a clearing agent, a certification body or legal advice.