Export Licence in Nigeria: What It Actually Costs

₦13,500. That is what the Nigerian Export Promotion Council charges for a new Exporter’s Certificate — the document people mean when they say “export licence”. Renewal is ₦7,500, or ₦12,500 if you are more than three months late. Anything you are quoted above that is somebody’s service fee, not a government charge.

The fee schedule

What	Fee
New certificate	₦13,500
Renewal of an expired certificate	₦7,500
Late renewal, after three months of expiry	₦12,500

Published by NEPC on its own registration portal, read 18 September 2026. There are no other tiers. The certificate runs 24 months from issue, then renews annually.

Why you will see ₦20,000 quoted

At the time of writing, one of the guides ranking near the top of Google for this question states ₦20,000 as the “official fee”. NEPC’s own portal says ₦13,500. A second popular guide declines to publish any figure at all and tells readers to check the portal themselves.

We cannot tell you which of those is a stale figure and which is a bundled one. What we can tell you is the rule that protects you either way:

Every quote you receive should separate two numbers: what NEPC collects, and what the person quoting you collects.

An agent charging for their time is doing legitimate work and is entitled to price it. An agent presenting their total as “the government fee” has told you something untrue, and it is the most common way first-time exporters in Nigeria get overcharged. Ask for the split in writing. If it does not come, you have learned something useful about who you are dealing with.

What “export licence” actually means

Nigeria does not issue a single document called an export licence. Searchers use the phrase — and so do plenty of agents — but the thing being described is the NEPC Exporter’s Certificate, a registration rather than a licence. It is issued once, held by the company, and reused across every shipment.

It is also written “export license” with an s. Same document.

What it is not:

It is not permission for a specific shipment. That comes from the per-shipment documents: Form NXP, the phytosanitary certificate, inspection certificates.
It does not cover crude oil or gas. NEPC’s remit is non-oil exports.
It is not a substitute for CAC registration, which comes first.

The real cost of getting started

The certificate fee is rarely the largest number in a first shipment. Plan for these as well, each of which we cover separately as we verify them:

Cost	Status
NEPC Exporter’s Certificate	₦13,500 — verified
CAC company registration	prerequisite, charged by CAC
Phytosanitary certificate (produce)	NAQS does not publish its fee — see why
Certificate of Origin	issued by NACCIMA; fee not yet verified
Inspection, fumigation, freight, packaging	varies by product and destination

We publish a figure here only once we have read it on the issuing agency’s own site. Where a fee is not published, we say so rather than repeat a number from a blog.

What it costs you to skip it

Paying an agent ₦20,000 for a ₦13,500 registration costs you ₦6,500 once. Not registering at all costs you the whole export chain, because the documents downstream assume a registered exporter, and it costs you eligibility for the Export Expansion Grant.

The more expensive version of this mistake is renewal. Let the certificate lapse past three months and the fee rises from ₦7,500 to ₦12,500 — and in the meantime you are an unregistered exporter mid-transaction.

Sources

NEPC e-Registration portal — https://nepc.gov.ng/ereg/exporter
NEPC, “E-Registration” — https://nepc.gov.ng/get-started/e-registration/

Last verified: 18 September 2026. If NEPC has revised the schedule since, the portal is authoritative, not this page — and please tell us so we can correct it.