A political activist and member of the Nigeria Democratic Congress, Aisha Yesufu, has said supporters of the party’s presidential candidate, Mr Peter Obi, will not rely on electoral institutions to protect their votes in the 2027 presidential election, and will instead place people at every polling unit and follow result sheets through every stage of collation to Abuja.
She spoke in an interview on Channels Television, discussing Obi’s prospects and the lessons drawn from 2023.
Yesufu, who supported Obi in 2023 without joining any party, confirmed that she is now a member of the NDC.
“I’m in a political party. I’m doing politics. I’m a politician now,” she said, describing herself as a cadre member.
Asked about her earlier disagreement over the conduct of the party’s primaries, she said she had moved on. “That was at that time. Right now the main focus is the 2027 election, and that’s where I am.”
She said she is not seeking elective office and did not cling to any ticket.
Yesufu said her work would be at polling units rather than at rallies.
“My role is ensuring that at every polling unit we have a council. We have at least nothing less than 20, 50, 100, depending on the polling unit, already mapping that out,” she said.
“Where I come in, it’s not going to be at the rallies only. My own is to be at the streets, at every polling unit, that we must take over every polling unit and ensure that every vote is protected. Men will mount, women will mount. We’ll be everywhere.”
She said the campaign already holds the cities and is moving into the hinterland to organise before election day.
Asked what would be different from 2023, Yesufu said the lesson was that the institutions cannot be trusted to do the right thing.
“At every polling unit we are going to stay there. Vote protection people that will stand there. We have our own alternative means of ensuring that we are protected, and then people will stand and follow the vote all the way from the polling unit to the ward collation centre, from the ward collation centre to the local government, and from there to state, and all the way to Abuja,” she said.
“There is no time that any ballot paper, any ballot box, result sheet, or the individual will be out of our sight. We will follow them using bikes. We will follow them using boat. We will follow them by air. If they are coming on private jet, we’ll use alternative private jet to go with them until we get to every place that every result is entered, and it must be the result that the people voted.”
Yesufu described the approach as a return to older methods. “The playbook is us going back to 2003, where everything, whether technology or whatever, we just stay on.”
Yesufu described the approach as a return to older methods. “The playbook is us going back to 2003, where everything, whether technology or whatever, we just stay on.”
Pressed on whether the plan amounted to an admission of organisational lapses in 2023, Yesufu rejected the framing.
“There were no lapses in the organisation. You have an institution that can’t be trusted,” she said. “We’ve come to a place where we are so fixated about this agent issue, but meanwhile INEC is given billions of naira, probably running into trillions, to conduct this election, and we are not asking them why it is that they don’t do free, fair, credible elections.”
She said the burden falls on the wrong party. “You can’t come and say that you have an institution that should do the right thing, you have security that should protect, and then put the onus on anybody to say, ‘Oh, because you did this or you did not do that.’ We’ve gotten to a place where we accept this anomaly in our society.”
On the absence of agents at some polling units, she said citizens filled the gap. “There might be agents that were not at this or that place, but guess what? Citizens played agents. Citizens were there. Citizens had their results. Citizens put out their results. People saw what was counted.”
She then stated her position plainly: “In this place, I do not have any trust of INEC, of security agencies, of the judiciary. That’s the difference we are doing.”