The Swedish ship at sea for almost a month with 186 Liberian passengers aboard has been given permission to dock in Lagos and is expected early today, officials said.
"We have gotten approval from the authorities to bring the ship in. She will come in tomorrow morning," said Mr Babatunde Sani, assistant general manager of the Nigerian Ports Authority.
The ship, the MV Alnar, has been at sea since June 1st and many of its passengers are reportedly ill.
With food and water supplies dwindling aboard and several of the passengers reportedly suffering diarrhoea and malaria, the Nigerian government last week announced it would allow the vessel to dock as a humanitarian gesture but final approval was only given yesterday.
"We have been on this ship for 25 days with no food, and we've been drinking salt water," Ms Victoria Sopah shouted earlier yesterday to a television crew trying to board the rusty Swedish MV Alnar.
At the other end of the deck, a cluster of children stared blankly towards shore, where the captain had hoped to disembark passengers turned away from Benin, Ghana and Togo.
Nigerian authorities ordered the Alnar to wait in Nigerian waters when it arrived from Cotonou on Saturday night.
Those on the deck, mostly women and children, would not say if they were refugees or where they had intended to go when they left Monrovia. The UN refugee agency (UNHCR) says some of the passengers may be refugees. Capt Henning Kielberg said at the weekend that the passengers were not refugees.