Nigeria’s First Lady, Senator Oluremi Tinubu, has urged women of the All Progressives Congress in Cross River State to intensify grassroots mobilisation and work towards securing votes for the party in the 2027 general elections.
Tinubu urged the women to demonstrate their commitment through door-to-door campaigns, market outreaches, church gatherings and prayer meetings, stressing that political support must translate into votes at polling units.
The First Lady made the call at an APC women’s strategic stakeholders’ meeting held in Calabar on Sunday, where she also urged members to embrace unity, love and reconciliation ahead of the elections.
This was disclosed in a statement released by the party and made available to PUNCH Online on Wednesday.
Speaking alongside the Co-Director of Women Mobilisation of the APC Presidential Campaign Council, Dr Betta Edu, Tinubu challenged the women to organise their supporters at the grassroots and ensure effective mobilisation in their respective communities.
She told them to return to their polling units and gather their people, beginning with the women, and have them canvass from door to door, church to church, prayer meeting to prayer meeting and market to market. She said the women’s results would show who is who.
She urged party members to put aside their differences and work towards a common electoral goal, calling on them to mobilise support for the APC at all levels.
Tinubu said the party must vote APC from top to bottom and warned the women not to confuse the party’s voters. She asked everyone to vote for the APC and to double their mobilisation at this critical time.
She assured the women of the party leadership’s support, adding that their performance at the grassroots would be an important measure of their commitment.
The meeting was organised by the Women Mobilisation Directorate of the APC Presidential Campaign Council to strengthen the party’s grassroots structures in Cross River State ahead of the 2027 elections.
Also speaking, the wife of the Cross River State Governor, Bishop Eyoanwan Otu, called on APC women to embrace unity and forgive one another in the interest of the party.
She urged them to set aside personal grievances and remain committed to their responsibilities, regardless of whether their efforts received public recognition.
Otu told the women to bury the hatchet and move on from whatever has been bothering them or whatever they consider their pain.
She encouraged the women to remain consistent in their efforts, saying their commitment to doing what was right would eventually produce results. She added that they should keep doing what they are doing, whether or not others like them, love them or like their faces, because consistency will produce the result.
The governor’s wife also highlighted her humanitarian interventions in the health sector, disclosing that her medical outreach programme had recorded 12 editions in three years, with more than 2,000 surgeries conducted.
She said the interventions were aimed at addressing healthcare needs among vulnerable residents and complementing the state government’s efforts in service delivery.
Otu said health is wealth. She explained that, since the governor cannot be everywhere while occupied with governance, administration and upgraded structural development, somebody must bridge the gap.
Otu added that her interventions were motivated by a desire to improve the welfare of residents rather than the expectation of public recognition.
She further urged the women to take the party’s message to their communities, wards, polling units, churches and places of business, while sustaining its existing political structures ahead of the elections.
The meeting also featured an empowerment programme for women and attracted the wife of the Speaker of the Cross River State House of Assembly, female lawmakers, commissioners, local government chairmen and vice-chairmen, councillors, political appointees, female candidates and other women stakeholders from the state’s 18 local government areas.
The participants also discussed strategies for strengthening the party’s presence at polling units, wards and local government areas ahead of the 2027 elections.
Cross River is among the states where the APC is strengthening its grassroots structures ahead of the 2027 elections.
The party is seeking to consolidate its position in the state following Otu’s emergence as governor in 2023.
