How to get paid safely when selling to Nigeria

A Nigerian buyer who negotiates terms, asks for samples and pays a deposit before you ship is a normal customer. The pattern that catches exporters off guard is the opposite: a large order accepted with no negotiation at all, followed by a request to pay a fee before the money can supposedly be released. This guide covers that pattern, the related "contract payment" scheme Nigeria's own anti-fraud agency documents, what payment terms are normal, and how to check a change of bank details before you act on it.

What payment terms are normal when selling to Nigeria?

Hold the same baseline you would use for any new buyer in a market you don't know yet: a deposit before you start production, the balance against shipping documents rather than after the goods have already landed, and both written into a signed purchase order rather than agreed only by email or chat.

What does Nigeria's own anti-fraud agency say about advance-fee "contract" offers?

Nigeria's Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) documents the parent of this pattern in its own public guidance on contract scams: a target is told that a government agency or committee is "processing the payment of a contract" executed in the past, is asked for bank details so the money can be transferred, and then meets "unending demands for advance payments until the victim comes to the realization that he/she has fallen into the hands of scammers" — "a classic advance fee fraud in which several fake documents are used in furtherance of the scam" (EFCC, Red Alert on Scam, undated guidance, text checked 2 November 2026). The export version turns the same mechanism around: instead of a cut of someone else's contract, you are offered an order of your own.

The clearest version of that export variant was written up in 2019 by Vietnam's Ministry of Industry and Trade for its own exporters, after complaints about companies in Nigeria, Cameroon and Togo: a buyer accepts an order of $1–2 million with no haggling on price, then asks the seller to pay a "brokerage," "licence" or "legal" fee of 1–2% of the contract value, or a flat "tender deposit" of $1,500–3,000, before the deal can close (Tạp chí Công Thương, Vietnam Ministry of Industry and Trade, 2019). The amounts are from that write-up; what repeats is the shape, not the price tag.

The EFCC's own rule of thumb is blunt: "No genuine contract is awarded on the internet or via the phone." Read it for what it covers — an award that arrives unsolicited, from a process you never bid in. A deal you negotiated yourself, with a buyer you found and checked, is a different thing. What should stop you is the order confirmed before any negotiation, followed by a request to pay before you get paid.

B2B.Africa never asks you to pay a buyer, a tender committee or an agent.

How do I check a change of bank details mid-deal?

Between June and August 2025, Operation Serengeti 2.0 — coordinated by INTERPOL across 18 African countries, Nigeria among them, and the United Kingdom — dismantled cybercrime and fraud networks, led to 1,209 arrests and recovered $97.4 million, with business email compromise named among the targeted crime types (INTERPOL).

Never change a payment detail on the strength of an email or a chat message alone. Call the buyer on a number you already had before the message arrived, not one written inside it, and confirm any change of bank account by voice before you send money to the new one.

What should I do before I ship or change a payment detail?

Confirm who you are dealing with before you rely on a fast "yes" or an unusually generous order — our step-by-step guide to checking a Nigerian company covers the registry side. Check any claimed government contract against NOCOPO, the Nigeria Open Contracting Portal of the Bureau of Public Procurement (BPP), rather than taking a forwarded document at face value, and check the channel as well as the name: the email domain, phone number and bank account should match the ones the organisation publishes itself. Keep every term of the deal — price, deposit, delivery address, bank account — in one written record rather than split across email, phone and chat; Messages on B2B.Africa keeps that record in one place. For ready-to-use documents, see Templates for a safe B2B deal in Africa.

This is general information, not legal advice.