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Join a community

Everything in CivicOS is scoped to a community — a state + Local Government Area (LGA) pair. Issues, petitions, and representatives all belong to one. Joining a community is what unlocks civic action for that place.

Your first communities​

When you land on CivicOS for the first time, you'll be walked through two steps.

Step 1 — find your communities. Search by name for whatever you're looking for: your town, your LGA, or your university. You don't need to know which local government area anything sits in — searching "University of Abuja" finds it directly, and so does searching "Gwagwalada" to see everything in that area council.

You can pick more than one. Most people join both where they live and where they study or work, and that's the intended shape: a student in Gwagwalada attending the University of Abuja belongs in both.

If you'd rather look around than search, "Browse by state and LGA" opens the older filter view — useful when you don't know the name of anything and just want to see what exists near you.

Step 2 — pick your home. Of the communities you selected, choose one as your home community. This is a real choice, not a formality: see the next section for what it decides, and note the 30-day limit on changing it.

Several universities in one city?

That's expected, and it's why search comes first. Abuja's universities sit across three different area councils — the University of Abuja in Gwagwalada, Nile and Baze in the Municipal Area Council — so browsing by LGA only ever shows you a fraction of them. Search by name and join each one you belong to.

Primary vs. active community​

CivicOS distinguishes two things:

  • Primary community (called your home community during onboarding) — this is where you can create issues, petitions, and (if you have the right role) representative profiles. Pick the place you're most likely to actually raise something.
  • Active community — the community you're currently viewing and acting in for signatures, comments, and upvotes.

Most of the time these are the same. They diverge when you visit another community's page — you can still sign petitions and comment there, but you can't create new issues outside your primary community.

Joining another community​

You can be a member of multiple communities. To join another:

  1. Go to Communities in the top nav.
  2. Search by name, LGA, or state.
  3. Click Join community.

Joining doesn't change your primary — it just adds a new membership. Being a member is what lets you comment, upvote, and sign petitions in that community.

Switching your active community​

Use the community picker in the top nav to switch between communities you've joined. Your feed, notifications badge, and the "act" buttons on representative and issue pages all follow the active community.

Changing your primary community​

If you actually move — new city, new LGA — you can change your primary community.

  1. Go to Profile → Community.
  2. Click Change primary community.
  3. Pick the target (you must have already joined it).

Choosing your home during onboarding does not burn this allowance — the cooldown starts from that first choice, so your next change is free whenever you need it.

One caveat: you can only change your primary community once every 30 days. This is deliberate — it stops people bouncing between communities to stack signatures or file issues in places they don't actually live. If you're within the 30-day cooldown, the UI shows the next date you can change.

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