MyCityApp could give Nigeria’s overlooked creative communities unprecedented visibility. Its growing relationship with government, however, raises questions about privacy, taxation and what may happen when an events calendar begins to know too much.
For Nigerian comic artists, animators, convention organisers and other independent creatives, invisibility is an economic problem. An event that cannot be found cannot easily attract visitors, sponsors, exhibitors or media attention. This is what makes the Federal Government’s National Digital Events and Experiences Calendar potentially valuable. By encouraging organisers to upload programmes to MyCityApp, the “Ember to Remember” campaign promises to help Nigerians, diaspora visitors and international tourists discover what is happening across the country.
The opportunity is difficult to dismiss. If Lagos Comic Convention, Nerdwork Comic-Con, the Abuja Comic Art Convention, Frame Fest and similar programmes appear on the platform, users may begin to recognise comics, animation, gaming, anime and cosplay as serious parts of Nigeria’s cultural economy. If organisers stay away, other creative sectors will occupy the digital space, generate visibility and eventually appear more economically important.
However, the same database that makes creators visible can also make them legible to government. That is where opportunity begins to meet anxiety.
When Visibility Becomes Legibility
MyCityApp is operated as a private platform. Its Google Play listing expressly states that it does not represent any Nigerian state government. At the same time, the Federal Ministry of Art, Culture, Tourism and the Creative Economy has selected the platform to power a national calendar covering all 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory. The official announcement invites organisers to upload events so the platform can become a central source of information about Nigeria’s September-to-December cultural season.
The relationship does not automatically turn MyCityApp into a government agency. It does, however, place a privately operated digital platform inside a government-backed tourism and creative-economy programme. That distinction, and the boundaries surrounding it, must be made clear to organisers. The concern becomes more significant when MyCityApp’s wider functions are considered. Its terms and conditions describe a platform capable of facilitating government-related payments, including fines, tolls and levies. MyCityApp is therefore not being designed solely as an entertainment calendar. It combines event discovery, location services, business listings, ticketing, payments and access to certain government-facing services.
Each feature may be legitimate on its own. The difficult question is what happens when they are connected. An organiser submitting an event normally expects to provide its title, date, venue, category, programme description, ticket information and promotional images. These details are intended to be public. A convention cannot attract an audience while keeping its location and date secret. MyCityApp’s Ember to Remember form also requests an organiser or company name, a contact person, telephone number and email address.
For a first-time organiser in a state capital far from Lagos or Abuja, this is not an abstract policy question. It is the difference between a convention that finally appears in national listings and one whose only paper trail is a name, a phone number and a bank detail sitting inside a government-linked database. That is the quiet calculation many small creative businesses in Nigeria are already making before they tick the box on Ember to Remember’s submission form.
That private organiser information is different from the public event listing. It can identify the individuals behind a programme and connect them to a particular venue, commercial activity and potentially a ticketing operation. The risk does not come from publishing an event date. It comes from combining public listings with private contact details, transaction information, payment history or records obtained from other systems.
MyCityApp’s privacy policy allows for the collection and processing of several categories of information, including identity, contact, financial, transaction, technical, profile and usage data. The policy also contemplates account and transaction monitoring, tax reporting and disclosures made in response to requests from regulators, tax authorities, courts, government bodies and law-enforcement agencies.
These provisions are not proof that MyCityApp is secretly monitoring event organisers or routinely transferring their information to tax officials. Privacy policies often contain broad clauses to address legal and regulatory obligations. Nevertheless, the language establishes that such disclosures are possible in certain circumstances. Organisers are therefore entitled to ask what data the tourism ministry can access, what information remains under MyCityApp’s exclusive control and whether event-listing data can be connected to ticketing or payment records.
There is another issue requiring clarification. MyCityApp’s website privacy policy describes numerous types of data that may be collected, while the platform’s Google Play data-safety section says the developer has declared that the app collects no data and shares no data with third parties. There may be an explanation involving differences between the website, event-submission form, mobile application and particular payment functions. On their face, however, the two public disclosures appear inconsistent. A platform seeking the trust of thousands of organisers should reconcile them in language ordinary users can understand.
A Familiar Warning from the Selar Dispute
For creators, these are not merely theoretical concerns. Nigeria’s business environment contains enough examples of disputed and overlapping government demands to make caution understandable. In July 2026, Selar founder Douglas Kendyson publicly accused the Lagos State Internal Revenue Service of demanding a backdated five-per-cent royalty levy on sales processed through his creator-commerce platform. Kendyson argued that Selar was being incorrectly treated as a royalty business when it actually provided software and payment infrastructure in exchange for a four-per-cent commission. He maintained that payment-provider charges left Selar with an effective margin of approximately one to three per cent, making a levy calculated at five per cent of total sales commercially damaging.
The case has not produced a publicly reported final determination establishing that either party’s legal interpretation is correct. A report on the dispute said LIRS did not respond to its request for comment. It should therefore be presented as a contested assessment, not as proof that the Lagos tax authority acted unlawfully.
Even so, the dispute demonstrates the danger of misunderstanding creative business models. Money passing through a platform is not necessarily the platform’s income. Ticket revenue is not the same as an event organiser’s profit. A convention may collect millions of naira and still struggle after paying for venue hire, security, power, equipment, accommodation, transport, advertising, staff, guests and production. Concerns about multiple demands are also not limited to digital platforms. Members of the Association of Event Vendors of Nigeria have complained about being subjected to levies from different levels of government. Similar experiences can create a culture in which small organisers avoid registration, conceal revenue or remain informal, not necessarily because they oppose taxation, but because they do not trust the consistency of the system administering it. It is important to avoid casually describing every tax as extortion. Governments have a legitimate responsibility to collect taxes authorised by law. Those revenues should help provide the roads, security, sanitation, electricity and public facilities that events and tourism require. The concern is arbitrary enforcement: duplicate levies, unofficial collection, retrospective demands, unclear calculations and assessments based on a mistaken understanding of how a creative business earns money.
Closing the Gaps Before They Widen
Against that background, a government-backed event database may trigger fears of “function creep”. Function creep occurs when information collected for one apparently limited purpose is gradually used for unrelated purposes. A database created to help tourists find a comic convention could eventually become useful for licensing, content regulation, taxation, law enforcement or commercial profiling. There is no public evidence that this is currently happening with the Ember to Remember calendar. The responsible response is therefore not to accuse MyCityApp of surveillance without proof. It is to establish safeguards before the system becomes too important to question.
Nigeria already has an appropriate legal framework. Section 24 of the Nigeria Data Protection Act 2023 requires personal information to be processed fairly, lawfully and transparently. Data must be collected for specific and legitimate purposes, limited to what is necessary, retained only as long as required and protected against unauthorised access or use. Applying those principles to MyCityApp should begin with a clear separation between event information and organiser information. The public should see the event’s name, venue, date, programme, price and official contact channel. A private telephone number, residential address, bank information or detailed transaction history should not become publicly accessible simply because someone listed an event.
The platform should state precisely which organiser details are shared with the tourism ministry and which remain private. It should explain whether submitting a free event listing creates any connection to its payment, ticketing or government-service functions. Organisers who only want visibility should not be forced into financial-data collection that is unnecessary for that purpose.
MyCityApp should also disclose how long organiser information is retained, who within the company and government can access it, and what process applies when a public authority requests information. A periodic transparency report could reveal the number and general nature of government requests without exposing individual organisers. Such disclosure would help replace rumours with evidence.
The Federal Government must provide assurances of its own. It should state that the national calendar is a tourism-promotion and cultural-discovery programme, not an informal revenue-enforcement mechanism. If information must be obtained for taxation or criminal investigation, the request should follow an identifiable legal process. Participation in a government-supported promotional campaign should not create a shortcut around data-protection safeguards.
What Creators Owe Themselves
Creators also have responsibilities. Comic and animation businesses should maintain accurate financial records, understand their tax obligations and distinguish company income from money collected for exhibitors, ticketing partners or other participants. Formalisation offers protection when an assessment is challenged, because a creator with proper accounts can demonstrate revenue, expenses and the real structure of the business. The comics and animation community should not abandon MyCityApp because of unproven fears. Staying away would make the sector less visible while concerts, food festivals and mainstream entertainment dominate the national calendar. The stronger response is collective participation accompanied by collective scrutiny. Convention organisers, publishers, studios and representative industry platforms can ask MyCityApp direct questions about event categories, data sharing, ticketing, government access and retention periods. They can also advocate for dedicated comics, animation, gaming and cosplay categories so that the community is not buried under the generic label of “Art and Culture”.
The Question Behind the Calendar
MyCityApp could become valuable infrastructure for Nigerian creativity. It could help a visitor find an animation festival in Abuja, a comic convention in Port Harcourt or a cosplay competition in Lagos. It could show sponsors that Nigerian geek culture has audiences in several cities and help government recognise a sector that has often been treated as a hobby. But digital infrastructure depends on trust. Creators should not have to choose between being invisible and surrendering control over their information. A national cultural calendar should help people discover events without quietly converting creative participation into regulatory exposure. Nigeria wants every event in one place. Before creators fill that calendar, they deserve a clear answer to one question: who will be able to see everything behind it?
Written by: Seyi Adedokun
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