Jonathan Eze writes that political mobilisation becomes substantially more consequential when it is entrusted to people who already possess social relationships within their communities.
A former Minister of Humanitarian Affairs, Dr Betta Edu, appears to have approached her assignment as Director of Women Mobilisation of the Presidential Campaign Council with uncommon urgency, organisational intensity and strategic purpose.
Barely weeks after her appointment to the position, the ex-Minister has moved the women’s mobilisation agenda beyond the familiar rhetoric of campaign-season enthusiasm into a more elaborate architecture of community engagement.
Her mandate, under the leadership of First Lady, Senator Oluremi Tinubu, is rapidly assuming the character of a nationwide mobilisation enterprise, with women being organised at ward and community levels ahead of the 2027 presidential election.
Edu was listed as Director of Women Mobilisation in the APC Presidential Campaign Council unveiled in August 2026.
The scale being projected is considerable: the Directorate says its activation strategy is reaching communities and grassroots structures across the country, with reports putting the target at 176,846 communities/polling-unit locations, while pursuing the broader objective of mobilising 40 million women votes for President Bola Tinubu.
Whatever the final electoral arithmetic may be, the significance of the exercise lies in the organisational philosophy behind it. It is an attempt to build a women-centred political network that does not wait until the final weeks of an election before discovering the grassroots.
And that is where Edu’s political assignment becomes particularly noteworthy.
A Mobilisation Strategy Built From Ground Up
The most striking feature of the emerging structure is its geographical spread.
From Kaduna and Kano to Katsina and Jigawa; from Kwara and Abia to Rivers, Imo, Cross River, Benue, Plateau, Oyo, Ondo and Osun, reports indicate that women’s meetings, ward engagements and community-level activities are already taking place.
In Kwara South, for instance, thousands of women were reportedly mobilised in Offa as part of the broader activation exercise. The women pledged to extend the mobilisation to communities, wards and polling units, with door-to-door engagement envisaged as the campaign structure becomes fully operational.
In Rivers, representatives of the Women Mobilisation Directorate have similarly emphasised the importance of taking political engagement to the polling-unit level.
The message from these disparate locations is therefore remarkably consistent: the mobilisation is being designed to travel downwards, from the national campaign structure to states, local governments, wards, communities and ultimately households.
That is a fundamentally different proposition from merely assembling women at rallies. A rally demonstrates numerical strength for a day. A grassroots network, if successfully maintained, creates continuing political contact.
Power of a Nationwide Women’s Network
Nigeria’s women constitute an indispensable constituency in any serious national political mobilisation. They are traders, farmers, entrepreneurs, professionals, civil servants, artisans, community organisers, mothers, caregivers, market leaders, religious-community participants and influential actors within families and neighbourhoods.
Edu’s strategy appears to recognise that political mobilisation becomes substantially more consequential when it is entrusted to people who already possess social relationships within their communities.
A woman who mobilises another woman in her market, street, village, ward or professional association is not simply distributing campaign information. She is using an existing network of trust.
This is the political capital upon which the Women Mobilisation Directorate is seeking to build.
The reported activation of structures across such a wide geographical expanse therefore represents more than a succession of meetings. It points to an attempt to create a distributed political network, in which the national campaign message is translated into local conversations and community-specific realities.
Edu’s Energy As Defining Feature
If there is one characteristic that has become increasingly associated with Edu’s current assignment, it is energy.
The former minister has entered the mobilisation space with a sense of urgency that suggests an understanding that presidential elections are not won by beginning grassroots work when campaign posters become ubiquitous.
The early activation of women across multiple states gives the campaign an opportunity to establish relationships long before election day.
In Kwara, for example, the mobilisation has already produced a substantial gathering of women. In the South-East, Edu has spoken of returning to communities and taking the message directly to women, “door-to-door, household-to-household, market-to-market, shop-to-shop, village-to-village and community-to-community.”
That language captures the philosophy behind the emerging structure. It is not simply rally mobilisation. It is contact mobilisation. It is the painstaking work of getting political messages into homes, markets, villages and neighbourhoods.
Beyond Rallies: Information as a Mobilisation Tool
Another notable dimension of the strategy is its emphasis on information.
According to the Directorate, the women’s structures are expected not only to mobilise for campaign rallies and election-day activities, but also to communicate information about government programmes, explain opportunities, identify eligibility requirements and help citizens understand how they can engage relevant institutions.
Women are expected to discuss issues affecting household incomes, businesses, agriculture, transportation, energy, enterprise development and community development, alongside programmes associated with the Renewed Hope Initiative. The Directorate has also highlighted the National Affordable CNG Transit Programme and other government interventions as areas requiring grassroots communication.
In political communication terms, this is important.
A presidential campaign cannot depend exclusively on slogans. It must ultimately translate national policies into language that ordinary citizens can understand in relation to their daily experiences.
For the APC women’s mobilisation structure, the woman in the market must be able to understand what a government policy means for her business. The farmer must understand its relevance to production. The mother must understand its implications for education, transportation or household welfare. This is where political communication meets grassroots mobilisation.
First Lady’s Women-Centred Agenda as a Mobilisation Catalyst
The mobilisation is also taking place against the backdrop of the women-focused interventions of the First Lady, Senator Oluremi Tinubu.
During a recent programme in Imo State, for example, the Renewed Hope Initiative/SDG women empowerment programme reportedly supported 2,500 women, alongside additional cash support announced for beneficiaries. Edu subsequently described the initiative as part of a broader women-focused intervention extending across the geopolitical zones.
For Edu, the political communication opportunity is evident: government programmes can become subjects of direct conversation between beneficiaries, community women and the wider electorate.
This gives the mobilisation structure something more substantial to discuss than electoral slogans.
It allows the campaign to ask a practical question at grassroots level: What has government done, what opportunities exist, who qualifies, and how can citizens participate?
Whether voters ultimately accept those arguments remain a matter for voters themselves. But from an organisational standpoint, the strategy provides campaign workers with concrete issues around which community conversations can be organised.
From North to South: A Deliberately National Structure
Perhaps the most impressive aspect of the reported exercise is its geographical breadth.
The mobilisation is not being presented as a sectional project confined to one region or political constituency. Reports indicate activity across northern states such as Kano, Jigawa, Katsina, Kaduna and Zamfara, as well as states in the North-Central, South-West, South-East and South-South.
The South-East component is particularly significant because Edu has publicly spoken about taking the campaign message to women throughout the region, including Abia, Anambra, Ebonyi and Enugu, following the Imo engagement.
This gives the women’s directorate a truly national character.
It is a structure attempting to speak across ethnic, regional, religious and socioeconomic boundaries, while relying on women who understand the peculiarities of their respective communities.
That combination of national direction and local agency may ultimately prove to be one of the defining characteristics of the mobilisation.
A Network That Could Become a Formidable Political Asset
Political organisations are ultimately sustained by people.
A campaign headquarters can produce sophisticated communication materials, but it cannot substitute for people who know the streets, villages, markets, wards and communities.
That is why the network being assembled under Edu’s direction is politically significant. If the reported structures are consolidated, properly coordinated and sustained over time, they could constitute one of the most extensive women-led mobilisation frameworks associated with the 2027 presidential campaign.
This is also where Edu’s personal political network becomes relevant. Her previous national engagements, her experience in public office and her relationships across different constituencies provide an existing reservoir upon which a wider mobilisation structure can be constructed. Her current assignment appears to be converting those relationships into an organised political network with defined grassroots objectives.
The distinction is important.
A network of contacts is not the same as a network of mobilisation.
The achievement lies in attempting to transform the former into the latter.
A Pace That Puts Other Political Structures Under Pressure
The APC Women Mobilisation Directorate’s reported pace of activation creates a formidable benchmark for other political organisations preparing for 2027.
It would be premature, however, to make an absolute factual claim that no other party can match the structure, since competing parties may possess substantial networks of their own and their mobilisation efforts will continue to evolve.
What can be said from the activities already reported is that Edu has set an exceptionally ambitious organisational tempo.
While political parties across the country are strengthening their structures ahead of 2027, the APC women’s machinery is already reporting engagements across numerous states and communities.
In grassroots politics, time is an organisational resource.
The earlier structures are activated, the more opportunity exists to identify coordinators, train mobilisers, establish communication channels, understand community concerns and maintain contact with voters.
Edu appears to understand this dynamic instinctively.
The Real Test: Sustaining the Momentum
Yet the greatest measure of this mobilisation will not ultimately be the number of meetings held or photographs generated from political gatherings.
It will be sustainability. Can the structures remain active beyond the excitement of their inauguration? Can community coordinators maintain contact with women?
Can information about government programmes consistently reach households? Can the network move from meetings to genuine community engagement? Can the enormous national structure be effectively coordinated without losing momentum?
Those are the questions that will determine the enduring strength of the project.
But the early indicators show that the machinery is not standing still. It is moving.
Edu’s Assignment and Politics of Scale
The scale of Edu’s assignment is enormous, but so too is the political opportunity.
The ambition to engage women across 176,846 communities or polling-unit locations and pursue a 40-million-women mobilisation objective represents an attempt to redefine the scale at which presidential campaign organisation operates.
It is a move away from politics as an occasional spectacle and towards politics as continuous grassroots engagement.
And in this emerging architecture, Edu has clearly positioned herself as an energetic field commander, someone prepared to take the campaign message beyond conference halls and major cities into the intimate spaces where political opinions are formed every day.
