Former Minister of Transportation Rotimi Amaechi has charged women across Northern Nigeria to take the fight for political change into their own hands by mobilising massively for the 2027 general elections.
Amaechi, who spoke at the African Democratic Congress (ADC) Women’s League Conference held in Abuja on Wednesday, said the success of the party’s campaign would depend largely on women, particularly in the North, where he said women and children were bearing the brunt of economic hardship.
He urged women to replicate the role women played in the struggle against apartheid in South Africa, arguing they could become a decisive force in Nigeria’s 2027 elections.
“ADC women, you must be different from other party women,” Amaechi said. “The struggle to take away these thieves from the government is 90 per cent dependent on our women.”
He recalled how women were mobilised during the political struggle that culminated in the defeat of the then ruling party, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), in the 2015 presidential election.
“When we were in APC and we wanted to remove your government, you saw what we did. We brought out the women. In every state we went to, women were in front,” he said.
Amaechi, who is the ADC vice presidential candidate in the 2027 poll, said the women were told that their participation was critical to victory, adding that they subsequently turned out in large numbers to vote.
The former Rivers governor was one of the prominent former PDP chieftains who defected to the All Progressives Congress (APC) ahead of the 2015 election and worked towards the defeat of the PDP government at the time.
Amaechi has since left the APC to join the ADC, hoping to re-enact the 2015 feat against the ruling party in the 2027 election.
Addressing the gathering of women, he said the economic situation had since deteriorated, particularly for Nigerians in the North, and urged women to use their voting strength to demand political change.
“How many of you can afford the food? How many of you can pay school fees without texting, texting to Dino or somebody else to give you some money for school fees?” he asked.
The former minister also cited rising poverty and the number of out-of-school children as evidence of worsening socioeconomic conditions, claiming that the number of out-of-school children had risen from about 10–12 million when he left the government to about 20 million.
He further claimed that 80 per cent of Nigeria’s out-of-school children and illiterate population were from the North.
Amaechi challenged Northern women to take ownership of the electoral process by mobilising voters from the national level down to individual polling units.
“The thing you need to do is to take the battle in your hands,” he said. “If all the women in the North come out to vote and stand there, these people cannot announce any result.”
He said the ADC was building its campaign structure from the national level to local governments, wards and polling units, stressing that the party would focus on producing a multiplier effect in voter mobilisation.
“Abuja will be empty. Abuja will be zero. Everybody will go down to his local government, to his ward, to his polling unit to bring about the multiplier effect of bringing voters,” he said.
Amaechi said the mobilisation target should go beyond the conventional “one-to-10” model, noting that the party’s campaign leadership had challenged its supporters to target “one to 100 and more.”
He expressed confidence that the women’s mobilisation effort would translate into electoral gains for the ADC in 2027.
“You have electrified this campaign, and I thank you and I pray that this spirit will get down home,” he said.
Amaechi assured the women of the support of the ADC’s presidential campaign and party leadership, saying the party’s presidential and vice-presidential candidates were committed to supporting women in the campaign.
“The journey to the villa has started, and we’ll get there by the special grace of God,” he said.
He also urged the youth to join the mobilisation effort, saying they, alongside women and children, were among those most affected by what he described as bad governance.
The vice presidential candidate said the ADC was determined to defeat the present administration at the polls, declaring that the women had shown by their response that they were ready to “lead the charge” for political change in 2027.
One of the central figures present at the all-women event was Mrs Titi Abubakar, the wife of former Vice President Atiku Abubakar.
