Terms of Service

These terms govern your use of GovStatz, the Nigerian governance-transparency platform operated by TMac Digital, a subsidiary of TMac Communications Ltd. By creating an account, or by continuing to use the app after accepting the in-app notice, you agree to these terms and to our Privacy Policy. If you do not agree, do not use GovStatz.

When you first enter the app you are shown a short notice covering the same ground: what the app asks for, who can see it, where it is held, what you owe the record, and how to change your mind. You are asked to accept it. That notice is a summary; these terms are the full agreement. We record the notice version you accepted on the device you accepted it from. Section 14 says what happens when the notice or these terms change.

• You must be at least 18 to agree to these terms yourself. A user aged 13 to 17 may join with the permission of a parent or guardian, and GovStatz is not directed at children under 13.
• You must give a working email address and keep your profile information accurate and up to date.
• One person, one account. Do not share your password, and turn on two-factor authentication or a passkey if you use GovStatz in a professional capacity.
• You are responsible for everything done from your account. Tell us immediately at support@govstatz.com if you think someone else can sign in as you.
• You may close your account by deleting your profile in the app and asking us to erase the rest of your data, as the Privacy Policy describes.

GovStatz publishes data about Nigerian governance: lawmakers, bills, budgets, allocations, projects, debt and public statistics. It gathers the data from public sources, and it gives citizens tools to discuss, question and report on that record.

It is not a newsroom, an election results service, a government channel, or a professional advisory service. Our figures come from third-party public records and may contain errors, lags or gaps; a lawmaker, party or agency may dispute a figure and we will correct or label it when we are shown a better source. Nothing on GovStatz is legal, financial, tax, medical or investment advice.

You agree not to:

• Impersonate another person or organisation, or claim a public office you do not hold. Verification on GovStatz is earned by submitting your details and your NIN to us; it is not an endorsement by GovStatz of your politics.
• Publish false, fabricated or deliberately misleading information about a person, bill, project or report. This includes inventing a citizen report or attaching a photo or video to the wrong official, project or place.
• Harass, threaten, defame or dox another user; publish another person's phone number, home address, NIN, BVN, voter card or other private document without their consent.
• Post content that incites ethnic, religious or regional violence, or that promotes corruption, electoral fraud, vote buying, tender rigging or other offences under Nigerian law.
• Use the platform to offer or solicit a bribe, kickback or "connection" fee in connection with a public office, contract, appointment, constituency project or security passage.
• Scrape, resell or republish our datasets as your own product without a written licence; misuse the API; hammer the site with automated traffic; or try to break, bypass or probe the security controls, row-level policies or administrator functions.
• Use the jobs board, marketplace, advertisements or town halls to run a scam, a pyramid scheme, or anything unlawful, or to breach the Companies and Allied Matters Act, the FCCPC consumer-protection rules, the NDPA and the NDPC’s guidance, or the Cybercrimes (Prohibition, Prevention, etc.) Act.
• Do anything that, in our reasonable opinion, puts users, public officials we list, or our staff at risk.

You keep ownership of the posts, comments, reports, photos, videos and arguments you submit. By publishing them you grant GovStatz a non-exclusive, royalty-free, worldwide licence to host, display, distribute within the service, and quote in our own outreach and reporting, with attribution to the name you publish under. This licence ends for a specific item when you delete it, except where we must keep a copy (for example in a backup, an unresolved complaint, or a legal hold).

Be deliberate about what you post. Approved citizen reports, public profiles and feed content are visible to anyone, including journalists, researchers and political actors, and uploaded media is served from a public content-delivery bucket. Do not upload material you are not allowed to publish, and do not record or photograph people where they have a reasonable expectation of privacy.

• A report filed through I-Report is your statement, not ours. We may publish it, attach it to the lawmaker, project or office you tagged, and share it with the responsible agency for a response.
• If you allow your browser to share location, we record the coordinates of the report. You can refuse and type the location instead.
• Do not attach documents that contain other people's sensitive personal data.
• Poll votes are recorded against your account so a single member cannot vote twice, and the argument you write may be published with your display name. Results are citizen opinion, not an official poll.
• A town-hall RSVP tells the organiser you intend to attend. Attendance is the organiser's responsibility, not GovStatz's.

An official who wants a verification mark submits their legal name, office, chamber or assembly, official email, phone, a headshot and their NIN. We use that information only to confirm identity, we keep it restricted to the applicant and GovStatz administrators, and a mark means only "we matched this person to this office". It never means GovStatz endorses their conduct, and it does not exempt them from these rules. If verification details are later shown to be false, the mark is removed and the account may be closed.

Where GovStatz sells a subscription or a promotional placement, the price, term and scope are shown at checkout before you pay; payment is taken by Paystack, which receives your email address for the transaction. Paid features can change or be withdrawn, refunds for a service we cannot deliver are handled through the billing and payments desk under Nigerian law, and nothing in a paid plan buys moderation influence or a verification mark. Sponsored content and campaigns are labelled as advertising; we are not responsible for what an advertiser promises, and money transferred to an advertiser is between you and them. How GovStatz keeps paid placements away from the record is set out in our Political Advertising & Commercial Independence Policy: where placements may appear, how often, and what they may never influence. The policy applies to every placement on the platform.

We may remove or label content, restrict a feature, suspend or close an account where we reasonably believe these terms, the law, or the safety of users have been breached. Where we can, we tell you what happened and why, and you may appeal by email; we do not moderate for political opinion, and GovStatz takes no side between parties or candidates. Public-interest material about officials is not removed simply because an official objects to it.

GovStatz links to sources, official portals, news reports, job postings and social profiles. Those destinations are not under our control and their own terms and privacy policies apply to them. Signing in with Google or GitHub is also governed by that provider's terms. We are not responsible for content, prices, safety or disputes involving a third party.

The service is provided "as it is" and "as available". To the fullest extent permitted by Nigerian law we disclaim all warranties, including that GovStatz will always be available, error-free, or that every published statistic is accurate or current. You rely on GovStatz at your own judgement, and for any decision with legal, financial or safety consequences you should verify against the primary source, which we link wherever we have it.

GovStatz, TMac Digital and TMac Communications Ltd are not liable for indirect, consequential or special loss arising from your use of the platform, including loss of data, loss of opportunity, or harm from content published by another user. Where we are liable, our total liability for any claim is limited to the greater of the fees you have paid us in the preceding twelve months or ₦100,000. Nothing in these terms limits liability that cannot be limited under Nigerian law, including for fraud or wilful misconduct.

If a claim, complaint or proceeding is brought against GovStatz because of content you published, information you supplied, or your use of the platform in breach of these terms or of law, you will cover our reasonable costs, including legal fees.

We may update these terms as the product and the law change. For material changes we give notice in the app and by email before they take effect, and the "Last updated" date at the top changes. Continuing to use GovStatz after the effective date means you accept the revision; if you do not, stop using the service and close your account.

These terms are governed by the laws of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, and the courts of the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja have jurisdiction. Before going to court, write to us. Most disputes about data, moderation or a published figure are settled by correcting the record. Data-protection complaints may also be made to the Nigeria Data Protection Commission through its published channels, as the Privacy Policy explains.

GovStatz is operated by TMac Digital, a subsidiary of TMac Communications Ltd, in Abuja, Nigeria. Telephone: +234 812 900 5839.

These terms are answered by the desks they name: support@govstatz.com, billing@govstatz.com, corrections@govstatz.com, privacy@govstatz.com, legal@govstatz.com, security@govstatz.com

An account problem is support@govstatz.com; a figure you believe is wrong is corrections@govstatz.com. Anything else is on the contact page, which lists every desk. Every one of these addresses is read inside GovStatz by the team that runs it.