Senator Yari to Women of the APC: "We Are Here to Support You, Not to Intimidate You"

The Director-General of the APC Presidential Campaign Council, Distinguished Senator Abdul’aziz Abubakar Yari, on Monday, 5 October 2026, led members of the Council to the Bola Ahmed Tinubu International Conference Centre, Abuja, where the Women Mobilisation Directorate of the Tinubu-Shettima 2027 campaign held its pre-inaugural campaign roll-out.

The programme was convened and chaired by the First Lady, Her Excellency Senator Oluremi Tinubu, CON. It brought together women leaders, party officials, mobilisers and grassroots organisers from every state of the federation and the Federal Capital Territory, under the theme printed on every access tag in the hall: One Voice, One Movement, One Choice, One Mandate 2027.

It was the women's day, and Senator Yari made no attempt to make it anything else. He came, in his words, to let the women know that the Council was there to support them, not to intimidate them.

Why the Council went

A presidential campaign council can easily become a building full of men giving instructions. Senator Yari has said more than once since he took on the job that he does not want the Tinubu-Shettima campaign run that way, and his appearance at the women's programme was meant to show it.

Speaking to the hall, he said the directorates of the campaign are not branches waiting for orders from headquarters. Each has its own field and its own people, and the Women Mobilisation Directorate reaches places and households that no other part of the campaign can reach as well. The job of the Council, he said, is to give the women what they need to do that work and then to stay out of their way.

He told them plainly that nobody from the Council had come to take over their programme or to tell them how to organise women in their own communities. They had come to listen, to show solidarity and to make sure the women knew that the leadership of the campaign takes their work seriously.

The 60 per cent

The figure that drew the loudest response of the afternoon came from the DG himself. Women, Senator Yari said, make up as much as 60 per cent of the votes cast in any campaign in this country. They register, they turn out early, they queue patiently and they bring others along with them.

Put simply, a campaign that has the women with it is most of the way there.

He went further than the arithmetic. Women, he said, are the ones who carry a message from the polling unit into the home, from the market into the mosque and the church, and from one generation to the next. A campaign that treats them as an audience rather than as organisers has misunderstood how elections are won in Nigeria. He said the Council would not make that mistake.

Appreciation for the First Lady

Senator Yari paid tribute to the First Lady for convening the programme and for the years she has spent building women's networks across the country, both as a three-term Senator and since 2023 through her work as First Lady. He said the turnout at the conference centre, with the main hall filled and the galleries crowded, was the result of that long work and not of a single invitation.

He also thanked the women of the All Progressives Congress for the support they have already given to President Bola Ahmed Tinubu and Vice President Kashim Shettima, and for the faith they have shown in the vision for 2027. He told them the Council had noticed, and that their contribution would be remembered when the campaign is over.

Participation, mobilisation and leadership

The programme was built around three themes that came up again and again from the high table: participation, mobilisation and leadership. Women leaders spoke about getting more women registered and voting, about organising at ward and polling-unit level, and about women taking real positions of responsibility in the campaign structures, not just being invited to fill halls.

Senator Yari said the Council agrees with all three. He undertook that the Council would work closely with the directorate as it moves into the field, and that the voice of women would be present when decisions about the campaign are taken, rather than heard after the fact.

He reminded the hall that the campaign has a long road ahead, and that elections are won in the months of steady work before polling day, not in the final week. The women, he said, already know how to do that work. The Council intends to make it easier for them.

Unity first

Much of the DG's message returned to the same point: the party must go into 2027 as one family. He urged the women to avoid divisions at state and local levels, to resolve disagreements among themselves quietly, and to bring new members into the party rather than argue over who arrived first.

He said the strength of the APC has always been its ability to bring different people from different parts of the country together behind a single candidate, and that women have often been the ones who keep that unity alive when the men fall out.

A large and colourful afternoon

The conference centre was filled hours before the programme began. Delegates came dressed in party colours, many in matching outfits made for the occasion, and the galleries rang with songs, chants and the waving of small flags whenever a speaker mentioned the President or the Vice President by name.

Members of the Council who accompanied Senator Yari sat with the women in the main hall and stayed through the speeches.

Looking ahead

The roll-out marks the formal start of the Women Mobilisation Directorate's field work for the Tinubu-Shettima 2027 campaign. State coordinators are expected to begin ward-level engagements in the coming weeks, with the directorate working alongside the Council's other structures.

For Senator Yari, the afternoon fitted into a pattern that has defined his first weeks as Director-General: going to the people who will do the work of the campaign, hearing them out and making clear that the Council exists to serve them.

He left the hall to the same message he had come with. The women of the APC, he said, are not being asked to support the campaign. They are the campaign, and the Council is behind them.