Form NXP Nigeria: It's Free, and It Expires in 180 Days

Processing Form NXP is free of charge. The Central Bank of Nigeria says so in as many words. You open it through an Authorised Dealer Bank before you ship, whatever the value of the goods, it must be used within 180 days of registration, and your export proceeds must come back within 180 days of the Bill of Lading date or you pay a 1% penalty.

The facts

Source: CBN Foreign Exchange Manual, 4th Edition, Memorandum 10 — Exports. Figures on this page are for non-oil exports. Oil and gas run on 90 days, not 180.

About that fee

The CBN’s wording is unambiguous: “The processing of the Form NXP shall be free of charge.”

If someone quotes you a price for “getting your NXP”, they are charging for their time filling it in, not passing on a bank or government charge. That may be a service you want. It is not a fee the form carries, and you are entitled to know which you are paying.

You will still meet real costs in the same sequence — the NESS Levy below is a genuine statutory charge — so the point is not that exporting is free. It is that this particular form is.

How it works, in order

1. Open the Form NXP through an Authorised Dealer Bank. That bank becomes “the bank named on the Form NXP” for everything that follows.
2. Open an export domiciliary account with that same bank — the CBN requires the account to be with the Authorised Dealer Bank where the NXP was registered.
3. Your bank approves the form. The Pre-shipment Inspection Agent then sends you a Request For Information (RFI) link, completed through the Stakeholders Verification Portal.
4. Inspection is scheduled within 48 hours of the PIA receiving your RFI and documents, at the approved location, with the Nigeria Customs Service present.
5. Pay the NESS Levy — 0.5% of the FOB value for non-oil products — through a designated bank after inspection, and deliver the receipt to the PIA.
6. The PIA issues the Clean Certificate of Inspection (CCI) within 72 hours of the inspection, once it has both your Form NXP and the NESS Levy receipt.
7. Ship. Deliver the original clean on-board Bills of Lading and related documents to the bank named on the Form NXP.
8. Proceeds return to your export domiciliary account at that bank within 180 days of the Bill of Lading date.

Quote the NXP number as your reference in every dealing with the bank, the CBN, the PIA and Customs — the CBN requires it, and it is what ties the paperwork together.

The ±10% rule

The allowable limit for export shortfall or excess is ±10% of the FOB value on the Form NXP.

Produce loses and gains weight in transit and a container is never packed to the gram, so the tolerance exists for a reason. Fall outside it and you have a discrepancy between what the form declared and what actually shipped. Where the PIA finds a discrepancy at inspection it issues a Non-negotiable Certificate of Inspection instead of a clean one — and a variation between the goods presented for loading and the goods confirmed by the CCI makes you liable to penalties.

Declare realistically rather than optimistically.

What it costs you to skip it

This is the document with the sharpest teeth in the whole chain, and the penalties are published.

Miss the repatriation deadline. Non-repatriation of export proceeds within 180 days attracts a penalty of 1% of the Naira equivalent of the proceeds still outstanding when repatriation fell due, converted at the prevailing rate on the due date. Your bank is penalised separately at 0.5%, which is why banks chase this.

Ship without a CCI. The Nigeria Customs Service is required to ensure cargo without a CCI from a Government-appointed PIA is not loaded onto the vessel, aircraft or border-crossing vehicle. Your container does not sail.

Export without the form. Under the Enabling Law of the NESS it is an offence to export non-exempt goods without a CCI. On conviction:

Those are the manual’s own figures, in Appendix II.

Letting the form expire

The Form NXP is valid for 180 days from registration. If it lapses, your bank can process and approve your first extension request for a period of not more than 90 days. Any request after that has to go from your Authorised Dealer Bank to the Director, Trade & Exchange Department at the CBN in Abuja for determination — a slower road, and not one you control.

Open the form when the shipment is real, not months ahead on the strength of an enquiry.

Oil and gas is a different regime

If you are exporting crude oil, gas or related products, the numbers on this page do not apply to you. The form is used within 90 days, proceeds repatriate within 90 days, and the NESS Levy is 0.12% of FOB payable within 30 days of shipment. NUPRC will not process an export permit for an exporter who has defaulted on the Form NXP or the NESS levy. We do not cover the oil and gas regime further — it is a different reader with a different risk profile.

What comes next

• NEPC Exporter’s Certificate — the one-off registration, before any of this
• Phytosanitary certificate — NAQS, for produce, and it cannot be issued retroactively
• Certificate of Origin — NACCIMA
• The full document list

Sources

• Central Bank of Nigeria, Foreign Exchange Manual, 4th Edition — Memorandum 10 (Exports), pages 24–26: Form NXP processing, the free-of-charge statement, the ±10% tolerance, the 180-day validity and extension route, the domiciliary-account requirement, the NESS Levy rate, the inspection and CCI timings, and the repatriation rule. Appendix II (Offences and Sanctions), pages 55–56: the 1% non-repatriation penalty and the conviction fines. https://www.cbn.gov.ng/Out/2026/CCD/The%20new%20Forex%20Manual%20-%204th%20Edition.pdf
• NEPC, “Export documents and procedures” — https://nepc.gov.ng/get-started/export-documents-procedures/ — confirms the NXP is issued by a commercial bank and is a prerequisite for the Export Expansion Grant

Last verified: 18 September 2026 against the 4th Edition of the manual. The CBN revises this document; check the edition number before relying on a figure.