Terms & Conditions

These Terms & Conditions ("Terms") govern access to and use of SMS Naija — the national education directory and institution management platform operated by Belad Creative Hub Ltd. ("SMS Naija", "we", "us") at smsnaija.com and its related applications. By creating an account, registering an institution or Event Organizer profile, enrolling in the ICT Club, joining the Royal Marketer program, or otherwise using the platform, you agree to these Terms.

1. What SMS Naija is

SMS Naija is a national education directory covering Primary, Secondary, Tertiary (including Health Education), Vocational, Tech, and Virtual/digital-learning institutions, paired with institution-type-specific management tools so a registered institution's staff can run their learning, students, payments, examinations, and academic operations on the platform. One national directory, multiple education models, one connected platform:

The directory defaults to Primary and Secondary schools; other categories — Tertiary, Health Education, Vocational, Tech, and Virtual — are discoverable through directory category filtering, each with its own search fields (programmes, faculties/departments, trades, courses) appropriate to that category. See our Directory & Institution Terms for how listings, verification, and search work.
Each institution category is served by its own management engine, matched to how that kind of institution actually operates: Primary/Secondary get classes, subjects, attendance, and a gradebook; Tertiary institutions get admissions, faculties/departments, programmes, courses, levels, semesters, GPA/CGPA, and student ID cards; Vocational and Tech schools get programmes, courses, cohorts, and assessments; Virtual Schools get digital programmes with weekly or playlist-based video lessons, quizzes, and progress tracking, and may additionally author their own Digital Services listings and ICT Club Creator API curricula (see Sections 8 and 9 below).
Event Organizers (Section 7) are a separate, independent account type for hosting ticketed live events and webinars — they are not a School, do not appear in the institution directory, and are not subject to the institution-registration or directory provisions of these Terms or our Directory & Institution Terms.
A Past Questions exam-practice tool, a Mock Examination mode, and an ICT Club of video courses — free for anyone tied to a partner institution, and available to independent learners for a paid annual fee (see Section 6) — and a Royal Marketer referral program through which independent marketers earn commission for onboarding institutions. See our Digital Learning, Examinations & Certificates Terms for the detailed rules governing these.

2. Accounts and roles

Three account types are self-service: Institution Owner registration — with a password, choosing the institution's category (Primary/Secondary, Tertiary, Vocational, Tech, or Virtual) and ownership type (public or private); Event Organizer registration (Section 7); and Independent Student registration (Section 6), which is only created upon successful payment of the independent-access fee. A single person may hold and switch between more than one of these portals under one login (for example, an Owner who also registers as an Event Organizer). Every other account — Financial Admin, Admissions Admin, Teacher, Parent, portal staff, or a K-12, Tertiary, Vocational/Tech, or Virtual School student — is created for a person by their institution or Event Organizer, individually or via bulk upload, and is tied to that portal's records. If your account was provisioned for you and you believe it was created in error, contact us at info@smsnaija.com.

You are responsible for the accuracy of information you provide and for keeping your login credentials confidential. Where two-factor authentication (2FA) is available — mandatory for Superadmin accounts — you are responsible for keeping your authenticator device secure.

3. Institution registration and platform modes

Registering an institution requires a valid CAC (Corporate Affairs Commission) number and accurate details. Providing false registration or ownership information is a breach of these Terms and grounds for suspension.
Every institution operates under one of three annual subscription modes, selected (and payable) from the Owner dashboard: Directory Only — a directory listing with no management tools, which may be priced at ₦0; Digital Compact — a subscription to selected management modules; and Automated Campus — a subscription to the full, expanded management engine for the institution's category. There is no separate pricing for individual features or modules — every feature is included as part of whichever mode covers it. The fee for each mode is set by SMS Naija and shown to you at the point of selection — it is configured in-app and may change without requiring a rewrite of these Terms; a price change never applies retroactively to a subscription period you've already paid for, only to new subscriptions and renewals from its effective date.
Tertiary, Vocational, Tech School, and Virtual School institutions each have their own annual pricing, separate from Primary/Secondary pricing, configured the same way and shown at the point of subscription selection.
A subscription may show as Waived (SMS Naija has granted free access without payment) or Suspended (access administratively paused) at SMS Naija's discretion — these statuses are independent of, and never automatically change, your institution's verification/approval status.
SMS Naija earns a flat transaction fee (currently 1%, configurable by SMS Naija without requiring a change to these Terms) on money collected through the platform — application fees, institution fees, and any other custom fees an institution configures — whether paid online or recorded as an offline/manual payment. This fee is processed automatically alongside the payment via a Paystack subaccount tied to the institution's own settlement bank account and cannot be waived, including on manually recorded payments.
An institution may set its own application fee, including making it free, at its discretion. This does not change the transaction fee that applies to any other fee it charges.
SMS credits (used for parent SMS notifications and admission letters) are a prepaid balance; if an institution's SMS balance is exhausted, notifications fall back to email where possible.

4. Feature-based access

What an account can do on the platform depends on the institution's category, its selected subscription mode and modules, its payment status, and administrative configuration set by SMS Naija. SMS Naija reserves the right to upgrade or downgrade an institution's mode, suspend or disable specific features or modules, change which modules are available to a given institution category, and suspend accounts for policy violations or non-payment — always with reasonable notice to the institution owner where practicable, except where immediate action is needed for security, fraud, or legal reasons.

5. ICT Club and Past Questions — free for partner-institution users

Anyone tied to a partner institution — Owner, Financial Admin, Admissions Admin, Teacher, Parent, or Student — gets full, free access to ICT Club courses (including certificates) and the Past Questions exam-practice tool for as long as their account remains active. Royal Marketers also get free ICT Club access, but not Past Questions. A Virtual School may additionally curate and resell access to eligible ICT Club courses through its own ICT Club Creator API curricula (Section 9) — see our Digital Learning, Examinations & Certificates Terms for the detailed rules governing all of this, including examination-content and certificate provisions.

6. Independent access to ICT Club and Past Questions

A learner who is not tied to any partner institution (for example, their school is not yet on SMS Naija) can still use ICT Club and Past Questions by registering as an Independent Student, subject to all of the following:

Independent access is paid annually, per resource (ICT Club and Past Questions are billed separately). The Super Admin sets and may change the price for each at any time, and may run a discounted promotional price; the price shown to you at the point of payment is the price that applies.
Payment is what creates your account. There is no free, standalone independent-student sign-up — your profile (name, email, and the other details you provide) is only saved and your account only created once your payment is verified as successful. If payment fails or is not completed, no account or profile is created or retained.
Access lasts one year from the date of successful payment. Your account shows the exact expiry date for each resource you've paid for, and you may renew before or after it lapses to keep or restore access.
If a subscription is not renewed, access to that resource ends on its expiry date. If an Independent Student account has no active subscription remaining (every resource they ever paid for has lapsed without renewal), the account and profile — including any practice history and certificates earned — will be deleted. An account that never subscribed to anything is not affected by this.
Independent access does not include any institution-management features (results, attendance, fee tracking, admissions, GPA/CGPA, etc.) — those remain exclusive to accounts tied to a partner institution.

7. Event Organizer accounts

An Event Organizer is a self-service account for hosting and selling tickets to virtual events — conferences, webinars, workshops, and Q&A sessions. It is a fully independent account type, distinct from an institution: it is not a School, is never listed in the institution directory, and has no student, academic, or admissions features of any kind.

Registration requires accurate owner and contact details. An individual planner with no registered business may skip formal CAC verification and instead verify with a government ID and proof of address, in exchange for a fixed, discounted platform fee on ticket sales; a registered business may verify with its CAC certificate instead. Providing false verification information is a breach of these Terms.
SMS Naija earns a configurable commission on every paid ticket, snapshotted onto that sale at the time it is charged — a later change to the rate never applies retroactively to a ticket already sold.
An Event Organizer is responsible for the accuracy of its own event listings (schedule, pricing, and description) and for actually delivering the event as described. SMS Naija provides the ticketing, payment, and virtual-room technology; it is not a party to, and does not guarantee the quality or delivery of, the event itself.
A person may hold an Event Organizer profile alongside a School or Virtual School profile under the same login, switching between them from their portal switcher — see Section 2.

8. Digital Services marketplace

Digital Services are paid, WhatsApp-fulfilled services (for example, document printouts or clearance assistance) offered either directly by SMS Naija or, where a Virtual School chooses to list its own, by that Virtual School.

A platform-authored Digital Service is offered and fulfilled by SMS Naija directly; revenue from it belongs to SMS Naija in full.
A Virtual-School-authored Digital Service is created, priced, and fulfilled by that Virtual School. It must be submitted for review and approved by SMS Naija before it becomes visible to the public, and may be suspended at any time if it breaches these Terms. SMS Naija earns a configurable commission on each such sale, snapshotted at the time it is charged, in the same way as Section 3's transaction fee.
Whichever party authored a Digital Service is solely responsible for actually fulfilling it and for the accuracy of its description — SMS Naija's role is limited to listing it, processing payment, and (for a Virtual-School-authored listing) reviewing it before publication. Fulfillment happens directly between the buyer and the offering party over WhatsApp, outside the platform.

9. ICT Club Creator API

The ICT Club Creator API lets a Virtual School curate one or more existing, platform-eligible ICT Club courses into its own curriculum — a bundle of courses it prices, brands, and sells as a single package through its own portal directory page, never through the main ICT Club directory or homepage.

This is curation, not duplication. A Creator's curriculum references existing ICT Club course content — it never copies, rehosts, or claims authorship of the underlying videos or lessons. Buying a Creator's curriculum grants the exact same course access, lesson playback, and progress tracking as enrolling in those same courses directly; what the buyer is paying the Creator for is the packaging, structure, and completion certificate the Creator adds on top, not the underlying video content itself.
A Creator sets its own price for its curriculum. SMS Naija earns a configurable commission on each sale, snapshotted at the time it is charged; the Creator's share settles either instantly (where the Creator has connected a settlement bank) or to a held-balance wallet, withdrawable via payout request.
Only ICT Club courses SMS Naija has explicitly flagged eligible for the Creator API may be bundled this way. A curriculum's section list may only be edited before its first sale, so a paying student's completion requirements never change under them mid-course.
On completing every section of a purchased curriculum, the buyer is issued a certificate bearing that Virtual School's own name and branding — not "SMS Naija" — distinct from, and in addition to, the standard SMS-Naija-branded certificate issued for completing an ICT Club course directly (see our Digital Learning, Examinations & Certificates Terms).
SMS Naija may suspend a specific curriculum offering that breaches these Terms or misrepresents its contents; existing buyers keep the access and certificate they already earned.

10. Royal Marketer program

Royal Marketer is the only marketing/referral role on the platform. Marketers earn from two distinct sources: a subscription-onboarding commission on institutions that register using their referral code and go on to become active, paying customers, and a separate, ongoing royalty on the platform's transaction fee revenue generated by institutions and Virtual Courses referred through their code. Commission rates, eligibility, and payout terms are as communicated at application and may be updated prospectively. Earnings first accrue as pending and become available for payout after a short holding period; payout requests may be approved, processed, completed, rejected, or cancelled, and any amount from a rejected, cancelled, or failed payout is returned to the Marketer's available balance. Misrepresenting SMS Naija to prospective institutions, self-referral, or fraudulent referrals will result in forfeiture of commission and account termination.

11. Acceptable use

Use of SMS Naija is also governed by our User Policy, which sets out account-security responsibilities and role-specific conduct rules in more detail. In summary, you may not: attempt to access data or accounts you are not authorized to view; upload false academic, attendance, or payment records; misrepresent an Event Organizer event, Digital Service, or ICT Club Creator curriculum; scrape, reverse-engineer, or interfere with the platform; or use the Communication Hub or ICT Club outside their intended purpose.

12. Intellectual property

The SMS Naija name, logo, platform design, and underlying software are the property of Belad Creative Hub Ltd. Content that an institution, Event Organizer, or user uploads or links (institution details, student records, course materials links, YouTube playlists, event descriptions, Digital Service listings, logos, blog contributions where invited) remains that party's property; by uploading or linking it you grant SMS Naija a license to store, process, and display it as needed to operate the service for you. An ICT Club Creator curriculum does not grant the Creator any ownership over the underlying ICT Club course content it references — see Section 9. A party connecting third-party content (such as a YouTube playlist for Virtual School lessons) confirms it has the appropriate rights or permissions to use and share that content through the platform.

13. Platform responsibilities and limitations

SMS Naija provides the technology platform — directory listings, management tools, digital-learning delivery, event ticketing, payment processing integration, and certificate generation/verification. We are not responsible for: academic or admissions decisions made by an institution; the accuracy of institution-, Event-Organizer-, or Creator-provided information beyond reasonable verification steps we take; examination outcomes or results entered by institution staff; the delivery or quality of an Event Organizer's event or a Digital Service; the availability of third-party services we integrate with (Paystack, Termii, Resend, Google/YouTube); or any party's misconduct, including incorrect data it supplies. Each institution and Event Organizer is responsible for its own academic, administrative, and content decisions, as detailed in our Directory & Institution Terms.

14. Suspension and termination

We may suspend or terminate an account, institution listing, or Event Organizer profile that breaches these Terms, the User Policy, or applicable Nigerian law — including fraudulent CAC information, referral fraud, false institution or event information, copyright violations, or unauthorized access attempts. An institution owner or Event Organizer may close their account at any time by contacting support; parent/student/teacher accounts are managed by their institution. An Independent Student account is also removed automatically on non-renewal, as described in Section 6.

15. Refunds and cancellation

SMS Naija platform fees (Directory Only fee, Digital Compact/Automated Campus subscriptions, per-category annual pricing, ICT Club/Past Questions independent-access fees) are distinct from payments an institution, Event Organizer, or Creator collects through SMS Naija (application fees, school fees, event tickets, Digital Service purchases, ICT Club Creator curriculum sales, and similar). Refunds for platform fees are considered case-by-case, generally only for demonstrable billing or payment-processing errors; refunds for the latter category are the responsibility of the party that set and collected that fee, not SMS Naija.

16. Disclaimers and liability

SMS Naija is provided "as is." Directory listings and institution information are provided by institutions themselves and by SMS Naija's team; while we take reasonable steps to verify institutions, we do not guarantee the accuracy of every listing. To the extent permitted by Nigerian law, SMS Naija is not liable for indirect or consequential losses arising from use of the platform, including payment processing or SMS/video-content delivery delays caused by third-party providers (Paystack, Termii, Resend, Google/YouTube).

17. Governing law

These Terms are governed by the laws of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. Any dispute arising from these Terms is subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the courts of Lagos State, Nigeria.

18. Changes to these Terms

We may update these Terms from time to time; the "Last updated" date above reflects the latest revision. Continued use of the platform after a change constitutes acceptance of the revised Terms.

19. Contact

Questions about these Terms: info@smsnaija.com or our support page.