Loccode was never meant to survive. That, at least, is the account Obinna Onyejeli readily shares. Two years ago, Maiaddy unveiled a proprietary system that assigns every street in Nigeria a unique, machine-readable identifier. The original strategy was to roll it out nationally through a partnership with the Nigerian Postal Service (NIPOST).

Nigeria's addressing gap is one of the largest in the world. Despite being Africa's most populous country, with over 200 million people, most streets lack formal, machine-readable identifiers, complicating everything from e-commerce last-mile delivery to banking KYC verification and emergency response. That gap is what made a national NIPOST rollout so consequential — and its absence so consequential in turn.

That partnership never came to fruition. Despite what Onyejeli has previously described as sustained outreach to the agency, Maiaddy had no contingency plan waiting in reserve — only a decision to make.

"More than showing promise, it worked as envisioned," Onyejeli told Technext, when asked what convinced him to build a business layer on top of Loccode rather than leaving it as a standalone addressing system. "But it faced certain death if we stayed the course with our initial distribution strategy, which was via a partnership with NIPOST. Since it did not materialise, we either had to let a good thing die or build out the layers on which people and businesses can benefit from Loccodes. We chose the latter. Maiaddy Business, just like Maimaps before it, is one of the ways Nigerians can derive utility with loccodes."

The Aba-based location technology company has since turned a stalled government partnership into a full infrastructure stack. Aba, in Abia State, is one of Nigeria's most important commercial and manufacturing hubs, known for its dense concentration of informal traders and small-scale manufacturers — precisely the SME segment that struggles most with inconsistent business directories and unreliable addresses. The addressing system, the Maimaps navigation app, developer APIs, and now Maiaddy Business are all owned and controlled by Maiaddy. It represents either the most efficient private-sector path to resolving Nigeria's address problem or a striking concentration of digital infrastructure in private hands resulting from a public partner's withdrawal.

Maiaddy Business is now live across web and mobile. Businesses can submit their details, operating hours, contact information, and location to a single dashboard integrated with the broader Maiaddy ecosystem, with information verified once rather than requiring updates across multiple inconsistent directories.

Beyond a Business Listing

Where Maiaddy Business seeks to differentiate itself from Google Business Profile — the dominant free incumbent — is in scope. Onyejeli emphasizes that the product was never intended to be merely a listing service.

"Unlike other similar products, the vision for Maiaddy Business goes way beyond mere business listings or business profile creation," he said. "Five years from now, a shop owner in Aba will have access to business tools available via the Maiaddy Business platform. These tools will include productivity tools, accounting tools and tax compliance tools. For a typical bank in Lagos, available tools will include HR tools, more capable productivity tools and very advanced analytics. Businesses of all stages and levels will find utility beyond mere listings."

The roadmap positions Maiaddy Business as more than a directory — it aims to become a business operating platform, the kind of integrated toolkit that companies like Flutterwave, Moniepoint, and Paystack have built for payments but which remains fragmented for non-financial business operations like tax compliance and analytics in Nigeria's SME sector.

Listing remains free. According to Onyejeli, monetization will come later through third-party tools integrated into the platform, with those partners setting their own pricing.

Asked why a business owner would adopt another platform when Google Business Profile already offers free listings, Onyejeli addressed the comparison directly. "Since we are the proprietary owners of the loccode system, it's fair to say loccodes are a core differentiator for us anywhere it shows up," he said.

He also offered a preview of an upcoming feature: "Over time, our users who have opted for spatial marketing on the Maiaddy app will be prompted about businesses near them. E.g., being at a location long enough may trigger a notification about a bolé seller nearby whom you can then find on Maimaps. This is free to the seller if they're registered on Maiaddy Business."

Approval Queue and Verification

The platform launched with applications open, but approvals have not yet begun. When asked whether any enterprise or institutional client is already using the platform, Onyejeli was straightforward.

"We haven't approved any applications yet, so they're all pending," he said. "We probably bit more than we can chew, but that feels like a good problem to have. Approvals begin this August, though."

The company is currently managing an applicant queue larger than its verification pipeline can immediately process. The platform's core utility — verified listings that customers can rely on — will become visible only once approvals begin later this month.

Verification remains the more demanding challenge. A platform built on business identity depends on whether users can trust its listings, a reality Onyejeli acknowledges.

"We've made the process easy on the eye by design, but behind the great UX is a very meticulous verification process that begins after a request is submitted to us," he said. "We still keep tabs on listings even after approvals and retain the ability to trigger a re-verification process. Generally, there are seven steps to submit a business, and each step includes basic questions that can be filled by anyone for any business, but without getting into the small details, I can assure you that King Mansa Musa will not be able to claim the UBA group lol."

Data Privacy Commitments

On data protection, Onyejeli pointed to the company's privacy policy — specifically the sections governing data use, sharing, and anonymized aggregation — as the foundation for its commitment not to sell personal data. Data sharing is limited to legal or regulatory requirements, such as payment processing. The policy operates against the backdrop of the Nigeria Data Protection Act, signed into law in 2023, which established a legal framework for personal data protection and created the Nigeria Data Protection Commission as a regulator with enforcement authority.

"Our users are very protected under our Privacy Policy, especially under sections 4 (How We Use Information), 6 (How We Share Information) and 7 (Aggregated and Anonymised Data), where we make it clear and unambiguous that we do not sell personal data and for the most part will only share user data where required by law or regulation for specific things such as payments," he said.

Maiaddy Business is addressing a genuine and persistent problem for Nigerian SMEs: inconsistent listings, outdated hours, and addresses that direct customers to the wrong locations. What remains uncertain is whether Loccodes, the proximity notification feature, and the promised suite of add-on tools will be enough to draw businesses away from Google's free, widely adopted alternative.

Onyejeli, whose professional background informs his confidence, is betting they will. The coming weeks of approvals will offer the first concrete evidence.