Squegy has officially entered Nigeria's crowded but largely informal artisan services market, launching its digital marketplace and positioning itself squarely against the WhatsApp groups, personal recommendations, and word of mouth referrals that have long dominated how Nigerians find plumbers, electricians and other skilled tradespeople. Founded by Amakiri Samuel Bomate in 2024 and bootstrapped from the start, the company describes itself simply as an on-demand marketplace connecting clients with verified skilled artisans in Nigeria.

The platform's mechanics are built around structured competition rather than a single fixed price listing. Squegy operates as a two sided marketplace where clients post jobs with photos and a budget, receive bids from nearby artisans, negotiate, and pay through a secure escrow wallet that only releases funds on job completion. That escrow structure directly targets one of the most persistent trust problems in Nigeria's informal services economy, protecting clients from paying upfront for work that may never get done properly, while also giving artisans confidence that funds are genuinely available once they complete a job.

On the supply side, the platform gives artisans tools to professionalize how they present themselves and manage their workload. Artisans manage their profile, services, availability, and bookings from one app, with the platform handling scheduling, transparent pricing, in-app chat, identity verification, before and after job photos, and direct bank withdrawals. That combination of features, particularly identity verification and documented before and after photos, is designed to give clients the kind of accountability and evidence of quality that referral based hiring rarely provides.

Bomate has framed the problem Squegy set out to solve in blunt terms: finding reliable, skilled tradespeople in Nigeria is frustrating and relies on trust, while artisans themselves often lack consistent work outside word of mouth. That two sided framing, unreliable discovery for clients paired with inconsistent income for skilled workers, positions Squegy as trying to fix both halves of a broken market simultaneously rather than optimizing only for the customer experience.

The launch also arrives into a market that is clearly attracting more attention than it has in years past, with other platforms targeting Nigeria's artisan economy also emerging around the same period, signaling growing recognition across the country's startup scene that formalizing how Nigerians hire skilled trades represents a genuine, underserved opportunity. With its escrow protected payments, competitive bidding system, and verification features now live just days into its public launch, Squegy's early months will likely determine whether Nigerian clients and artisans alike are ready to trade the familiarity of WhatsApp referrals for a more structured, accountable digital marketplace.