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Tokunbo is Yoruba for 'returned from across the sea' — it names an import, not a source country. What the premium actually buys, and what a Chinese tokunbo costs to land in Lagos.
Ask a Lagos dealer what a tokunbo is and he will probably say a car from America. Ask a linguist and you get a different answer: tòkunbọ̀ in Yoruba is ti — from — okun — the sea — bọ̀ — to return. A child born abroad is a tokunbo. A car shipped in from anywhere is a tokunbo. The word names the crossing, not the flag on the ship.
The Oxford English Dictionary entry for tokunbo, added in its Nigerian English update, defines it as an adjective denoting an imported second-hand product, especially a car. The dictionaries that bother to trace it all land on the same three Yoruba roots. None of them mention the United States.
That distinction matters commercially, because the two meanings price differently. If tokunbo means imported, then a car that clears at Apapa after a crossing from Nansha is a tokunbo in exactly the same sense as one that clears after a crossing from Baltimore. If tokunbo means American, then it is not, and no amount of paperwork changes that. Nigerian buyers use the word both ways, often in the same sentence, and that ambiguity is where a lot of money changes hands for no reason.
Walk through Mandilas or along the Lagos-Badagry Expressway and the source countries you hear are the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, continental Europe, the Emirates and Japan. China is not on that list — yet the trade data puts it fourth among Nigeria's sources of used vehicles, behind a United States share of roughly 78 per cent. The car is already arriving. The word has not caught up.
The reason is not build quality and it is not the word. It is the trail. A car bought at a US auction arrives with a VIN that a Nigerian buyer can run through a history report in ninety seconds: accident records, title status, odometer readings at every test. That is what a dealer is really buying when he buys American, and it is why a Chinese-sourced car at the same price and the same condition sits unsold next to it. The market is not rejecting the car. It is rejecting the absence of a record it knows how to read.
Nigerian dealer pricing puts a tokunbo roughly 15 to 40 per cent above a Nigerian-used car of the same year and model, with a clean-title, verifiable-history unit at the top of that band and an unverified one sometimes trading at parity. Those are dealer market estimates rather than an official series, but the direction is not in dispute: buyers pay more for a car whose past they can check.
Note what the premium is attached to. Not to the shipping route, not to the auction house, not to the country printed on the export certificate. It is attached to the record. A car with a documented service history, an inspected body and a VIN that resolves is worth more in Lagos than an identical car without those things — regardless of which port it left from.
Below is the full landed cost to Lagos on three models of the kind dealers ask for, using our own duty and freight parameters and an indicative FOB for an export-grade 2018 unit. This is the cost to clear, not the price you sell at — there is no dealer margin in these numbers and no tokunbo premium.
| Model | Engine · Green Tax | FOB Nansha (USD) | Landed in Lagos (USD) | Landed / FOB |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Toyota Camry 2018 | 2.0L petrol · Green Tax 2% | 12,000 | 21,161 | 1.76 |
| Toyota Corolla 2018 | 1.2L turbo petrol · no Green Tax | 9,500 | 17,345 | 1.83 |
| Toyota Hilux 2018 | 2.8L diesel 4x4 · Green Tax 2% | 17,000 | 28,330 | 1.67 |
The tax take is 41.5 per cent of CIF on the Camry and 41.6 per cent on the Hilux. That is the number a dealer has to recover before anything else, and it is the same number whether the car came from China or from America — duty, levy, surcharge, ETLS, the four per cent FOB levy and VAT do not care about the origin as long as the car is not ECOWAS-built.
If you want the same arithmetic on a different model, that page carries ten of them. If you want the comparison against the US channel — why it holds 78 per cent and what that share actually means — it is here.
A tokunbo is bought on paperwork more than on paint. The same checks apply to a Chinese unit as to an American one, and if a seller cannot produce them, that is the answer to your question:
None of that is exotic. It is the standard a buyer already applies to an American car and rarely bothers to apply to anything else, because the history report did the work for him. Where no report exists, the work has to be done by hand — and that is the whole of the difference between a tokunbo that sells and one that sits.
By the word's meaning, yes. Tokunbo is Yoruba for 'returned from across the sea' and the OED defines it as an imported second-hand product, especially a car. It does not specify a source country. In everyday dealer usage the word usually implies the US or Europe because that is where the trade has historically come from — but that is habit, not definition.
Usually they are not cheaper once landed. The FOB is often higher because China's own used market is expensive, while the ocean freight is lower because Nansha to Lagos is a shorter, busier run than Baltimore to Lagos. On a 2018 Camry the two effects largely cancel. The real price gap in the market is not China versus America — it is verifiable history versus unverifiable history.
Tokunbo means the car was previously used outside Nigeria and imported. Nigerian-used, sometimes called Naija-used, means it was bought new in Nigeria and driven here. The price gap runs roughly 15 to 40 per cent in favour of tokunbo, and it is paid for the assumption of better maintenance abroad — an assumption worth checking rather than trusting.
Resale depends on the record, not the origin. A Chinese model with a thin parts network and no service history loses value faster than a Toyota from any port. A Chinese-branded model that has dealer support in Lagos — Geely, Chery, GWM and BYD all have some — behaves like any other car of the same age and condition.
Not with Carfax, which covers North America. You check it with the manufacturer's VIN record, the dealer service book, and a physical inspection before shipment. It is more work than a ninety-second report and it is the reason the Chinese channel is still priced at a discount to the American one.
Send the model and the year range you are buying, and we will come back with the units that fit, the VIN and build year on each, the service record we hold, and the landed cost to Lagos calculated on that exact car.
Send a sourcing requestReady to pick a vehicle? See what is on the water and ready to book in the live stock list, or compare engines, years and body types across the full model list we can source for you.
This page gives you the vehicle and the tax rate. The full landed-cost breakdown shows FOB, freight, insurance, duty and clearing, line by line.