An import service sized for one item, not one container — with all 11 stages visible, including the 3 inside customs that everyone else collapses into one word.
It was the silence. An import leaves a warehouse abroad, lands in Lagos, and then disappears for a week behind a status that says “in customs” and nothing else.
Everyone importing into Nigeria at small scale knows the shape of it. You buy something. You are told a price. You wait. At some point the price changes, because duty was never in the first number. At some point the tracking stops updating, and the only way to find out anything is to ring somebody who rings somebody else.
None of that is a technology problem. Clearance genuinely takes time, duty genuinely varies, and the people doing the clearing are not hiding anything. The problem is that nobody passes the information back down the chain to the person waiting for their parcel.
So that is what Waybridge is: the part of the chain that talks. We ship it, clear it and deliver it — and at every step, including each step inside customs, the person who is waiting gets told.
These are not values on a wall. Each one is a decision we have already made in the product, and each one costs us something — which is the only way you can tell whether a principle is real.
Most trackers go quiet at the border and say "in customs" for a week. We split clearance into 3 steps and send a message at each one. When something sits too long — 3 days in customs, 5 anywhere else — we tell you that too, rather than waiting to be asked.
Every quote is itemised: item, shipping, duty, VAT, our fee. Nothing is added at your door. If we price it wrong, that is our mistake to absorb, not a surprise to hand you on delivery.
Not an app you have to install and not an email you will not read. WhatsApp, because that is where Nigerian commerce already happens, and because replying to it reaches a person.
Sometimes the thing you want is already in Lagos for less than the duty would have been. We will say so, and find it for you instead. We make less on that, and it is still the right answer.
A service that claims to do everything is a service you cannot judge. These are the four things we are regularly asked for and do not offer.
We do not run planes or trucks. We consolidate, clear and deliver, working with carriers and a licensed clearing agent.
If you are importing at pallet scale, a freight forwarder will serve you better and cost you less. We are built for one item to thirty.
On the traveller route, items are handed over unsealed and inspected. A sender who will not allow that is refused, every time.
If duty on something is genuinely unpredictable, we say so and give you a range with the reason, rather than a confident number we would have to revise.
Our hub is in Lagos, which is where the parcels land and where the clearing happens. We deliver nationwide, and the people who answer your messages are in the same country as your package.