Send a letter to Nigeria from Sweden

Write the house number before the street name, followed by the district or neighbourhood.

The state must appear on its own line: Lagos State, Rivers State, Oyo State, etc. Without it, the address becomes difficult to interpret.

Postcodes exist but are applied inconsistently across Nigeria. Include it if you have one, but do not rely on it for sorting.

The final line must read NIGERIA in uppercase—and here's the counter-intuitive part: because your letter is sorted in Sweden before leaving the country, this last line must be written in Swedish. In this case, the Swedish and English names are the same, so write NIGERIA.

A typical address format: house number and street, district, city, state, postcode (if known), NIGERIA.

The last line is always the country name in Swedish: NIGERIA. This surprises people who write the rest of the address in English, but the letter is sorted in Sweden before it leaves the country, and Swedish sorting reads Swedish. Everything above that line should look exactly as it would if the letter had been posted inside Nigeria, because a postal worker there is the one who has to read it.

Almost every letter that fails to arrive has an address problem, not a transport problem. These are the mistakes that keep coming back on mail posted from Sweden to Nigeria:

Always add a sender address. A letter with a correct sender comes back to you if the address is wrong, and you can then send it again. Without one, the letter is simply gone.

Normal delivery is 12–25 vardagar, counted from the moment we hand the letter to PostNord — not from the moment you order. Order before 11:45 on a weekday and the letter is handed in the same day.

Most of the variation comes from distribution inside Nigeria rather than from the flight. A letter to a major city arrives faster than one to a rural address in the same country.

A standard letter to Nigeria costs 88 SEK and an express letter 128 SEK. Printing, paper, envelope, postage and hand-in to PostNord are all included. The price is the same to every country, so you never need to know which postal zone Nigeria belongs to.

PostNord divides the world into seven zones if you buy stamps and post the letter yourself, which is why other services charge different amounts for different countries. The table below shows both options.

NIPOST (Nigerian Postal Service) is the national postal operator responsible for mail delivery across Nigeria. The service maintains functional delivery networks in major cities such as Lagos, Abuja, Port Harcourt, and Kano, though infrastructure and delivery consistency can vary significantly between urban and rural areas.

In practice, many recipients in Nigeria use post office boxes or company addresses rather than relying on street delivery, particularly in commercial districts. This is partly due to inconsistent street addressing in some areas and partly a matter of security and convenience. If your recipient has provided a P.O. Box number, it's often the most reliable delivery method.

Delivery times from Sweden typically range from 12 to 25 working days, though this can be affected by customs processing, local sorting capacity, and the final delivery location within Nigeria. Urban addresses generally see faster delivery than rural or remote areas.

Registered international mail (Rek utrikes) may contain documents only, weighs no more than 2 kg and carries liability up to 2,000 SEK. It can be tracked to most countries, and only one recipient may be named.

It is the right service for notices of termination, powers of attorney and legal documents where you need proof that the letter was sent. The country name still has to be written in Swedish on a registered letter — NIGERIA on the last line.

Banknotes and coins may not be sent in an international letter, in any currency and for any amount. Dangerous goods are prohibited. Goods sent in a letter to a country outside the EU require a customs declaration and a barcode that an ordinary letter does not carry.

We therefore send documents and personal letters only. That is also what keeps the service simple: no customs forms, no weighing and no questions about the contents.

You need no printer, no envelope and no international stamps. Everything happens in your browser, and the letter is handed to PostNord in Sweden by us.