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Civic Notes
Nigerian law in plain English
A free reference that sets the original text of each Nigerian Act beside a plain-English explanation of what it means for you, with every claim linked back to the section it comes from. Eight Acts so far. The explanations are drafts, labelled as such, and awaiting review against the Acts.
- For
- Self-commissioned
- What it is
- Web application
- What we did
- Research, Information design, Platform engineering
- Live at
- Open Civic Notes
- Backend
- GoPostgreSQL
- Frontend
- AstroServer rendered on Cloudflare Workers
- Infrastructure
- HetznerCaddysystemdCloudflare
- 8Acts in the collection
- 724Sections transcribed
The problem
Most people never read the law that governs them. The text is long, written for lawyers, and spread across statutes that change. What they get instead is a summary from a news article or a friend, and nothing to check it against.
What we did
We built it ourselves. Each Act is transcribed in full, and the site sets a plain-English explanation beside the Act’s own words, with a link from every claim to the section behind it. Because the source and the explanation sit side by side, a reader can see whether the explanation is fair.
Treating law as structured, linked data is also what makes it usable by other software, in the same way the other systems here treat registries and public data.
What exists now
Eight Acts, including the Data Protection Act 2023, the Nigeria Startup Act, the 2025 tax reform Acts, the Electoral Act 2026 and the NIMC Act 2026. There are everyday starting points for situations such as controlling your personal data or sorting out tax paperwork, and a page explaining how the explanations are written and checked.
What it produced
A working public library. It is new, and we publish no usage figures. The explanations are drafts that have not yet been reviewed against the Acts, and the site says so.
What we learned
To be written once the explanations have been reviewed and people have used it.
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