The platform, which went live today on web and mobile, allows any Nigerian, from a farmer in Ikot Ekpene to a nurse in Manchester, to find their home LGA, interact in indigenous languages, transact securely, and engage directly with their local council leadership.
According to the company, LGA Connect is designed to solve two long-standing gaps: the low online visibility of local governments, which is the tier of governance that most impacts daily life, and the lack of structured coordination for an estimated 17 million Nigerians abroad who remit tens of billions of dollars home annually without a direct channel to their communities.
Speaking on the launch, Ini Archibong, Regional Director at Chastest Consult, said the platform addresses Nigeria’s core challenge of coordination.
“Nigeria does not have a talent problem, an ambition problem or a diaspora problem. It has a coordination problem. For too long, the tools our people used to organise, transact and hold power to account were built for someone else’s country. LGA Connect is built for us, at the level where governance actually touches life,” Archibong said.
Upon registration, every user is assigned a home LGA feed with access to post community updates, share safety alerts, browse jobs, support local businesses, participate in polls and petitions, and direct questions to their LGA Chairman through a moderated “Ask the Chairman” feature with publicly tracked response rates. While English is the default language, users can converse in their native languages.
The platform also features an LGA Performance Index, which ranks councils daily across engagement, economic activity, civic responsiveness, diaspora participation and governance transparency.
At the centre of LGA Connect is a marketplace built for artisans, farmers and SMEs. Sellers list products on their LGA page, making them visible to Nigerians worldwide. Buyers purchase using platform tokens, priced at ₦100 per token and fundable in local currency, which are held in escrow by Chastest Consult until delivery is confirmed.
Delivery is facilitated through verified logistics partners including GIG Logistics, Kwik, Red Star Express, DHL and NIPOST EMS, or via direct collection from the seller. Chastest retains a small platform fee, with the balance paid directly to the seller.
For local producers, from weavers in Aba to shea-butter cooperatives in Katsina, the model provides global reach with local-level security.
LGA Connect includes a crowdfunding module that allows verified Nigerian founders to raise capital from as little as ₦5,000 per investor. All campaigns feature Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC) verification, a seven-day cooling-off period, and mandatory founder updates. Diaspora users can invest directly in businesses within their home LGA using the same token system.
Individual accounts on LGA Connect are free. Local and state governments, chambers of commerce and cooperatives can subscribe annually to claim and manage their official pages, with tools to broadcast updates, host virtual town halls, run polls, respond to citizen queries, and issue safety alerts. Each council subscription includes up to three admin seats scoped to that LGA. State-level packages for coordination across councils are available on request.
“Citizens should never be charged to speak to their own government, so individuals pay nothing,” Archibong explained. “But the moment a local government wants the tools to broadcast, moderate, host virtual town halls and respond to their people on the record, that is a service, and a serious one. We charge for it because we intend to deliver it properly.”
Archibong described LGA Connect as the first in a series of products Chastest plans to release in the coming months aimed at improving national coordination.
“Every serious social network in the world was built somewhere else, for somebody else. It is long past time for Nigeria to have platforms that treat its 774 local governments as first-class citizens and its diaspora as a permanent part of the family,” he said.
LGA Connect is now live via web and mobile as a progressive web app that can be installed on any smartphone without an app store download. Individual registration is free