As 2027 draws near, the contest is becoming real and no longer theoretical. The campaign is taking shape, the roles are have been assigned, and the difference between paper tigers and those with influence on the ground is becoming clear. This piece is about that difference. I call it political capacity, and I want to show, with examples from the people around this administration, what it looks like when it is real.

I have written extensively on President Tinubu, Vice President Shettima and their leadership capacity, and on the policy vision behind this administration. I have also discussed the people who caught that vision and are running with it. As a citizen, I believe in an ideology whose direction has been revealed to us. Today, though, I want to put policy aside and look at political capacity.

Policy is policy. We know who is executing the President’s vision. Political capacity is a different question, and it is measured by what you can deliver. When you go to your ward, your polling unit, your local government or your state, how many people can you show that you have empowered or impacted? How many communities? If you have done this work, the impact can be converted into political capital. A few people come to mind, and I will take them one after the other.

From the first year of this administration, the First Lady has shown political capacity through her empowerment programmes. I have written about her before. Take a look at the list of states she has visited since this government came to power, going from place to place empowering women, young and old, widows and everyone in between. This is political capacity.

Some of these people were empowered as far back as four years ago, and she is still empowering them. They are the people who will turn out to vote for the President’s re-election. She did much of the groundwork even before the APC campaign kicked off. She travels and the people have started a song calling her “Awamama.” I was hoping somebody would start an “Awamama” movement for her, because she is a woman of political capacity.

Aside from her relationship with the President, she has the capacity to mobilise people for her own political career and for anybody she supports. Every politician who is going somewhere should have her type as a backbone.

How do you recognise a man who has capacity? I said in one of my interventions that I commended Senator Abdul’aziz Abubakar Yari when he emerged as DG of the campaign council, and I pointed to my encounter with him in November last year. I saw one man single-handedly mobilise past local government chairmen from across the country to Abuja. He gave them hotel accommodation, paid their transportation and fed them for three days: the day of arrival, the day of the event and the day after.

He did not stop at the APC. He invited everyone, whether PDP, NNPP or whatever party they came from. In almost every state, a local government has at least five former chairmen, so he brought them together and showed them the direction the President is going and who they will be working for come 2027. That was two years before the election.

I see a grassrooter, a man who understands the dynamics of the political class and political strategy, and he proved it by doing it. So when the President appointed him DG, I had no doubt he is a performer.

Minister Nyesom Wike is another who has proven capacity. Yesterday I saw the news that every ward councilor in FCT who delivers his council for Tinubu will be awarded ₦10 million. I calculated it, and it comes to about ₦620 million, and I believe this is the same method he will deploy for Rivers State and the Rainbow coalition states. We need like-minded leadership. Two days ago, before that news broke, I had opined that every minister should go to their state and work. The ministers have been told they do not need to join every campaign council. The President has helped them, given them appointments and put them where they have gained something, so it is time to repay by delivering the President.

I made an analogy. Delivering a state for the President is easy if the governors and ministers are ready to sacrifice and go all out. If the target is 200,000 votes, they can give 50,000 or 200,000 people some empowerment. Even in the Southeast, which largely belongs to Obi, you can find the people who are far below the poverty line and empower them with ₦50,000 or ₦200,000. Make sure they are people who have voters cards, mobilise them, organise them, and show them where to vote. They will vote. You can call it vote buying, but politics has different strategies. Even in the developed world, Trump was openly promising people thousands of dollars if they voted for his party in the midterms.

So what am I saying? It is easy. Governors mostly deliver themselves for a second term. It is rare for a governor to lose a second term unless federal might is against him, or he has offended a political machine or grassroots leader bigger than him in his state. Since 1999, you can hardly count 10 governors who lost re-election. If they can deliver themselves once and again, what is difficult about delivering the President?

That is why I have already marked a standard for the Southeast. Any governor there who delivers 150,000 to 200,000 votes has done well and earns a pass mark as a political protégé of Tinubu. I relate this to the last election in the East. Only Hope Uzodinma In 2023 helped deliver 60,000 votes from the East, in an area where we were getting 5,000 or 10,000 which shows capacity. That is a huge number, and having won once, I believe he can do more. So 200,000 should be child’s play. Many of these ministers and appointees never imagined they would become anything, and out of nowhere they became ministers and became wealthy. They should bring out a portion of what they have benefited and support the President’s re-election.

Wike meant what he said about ₦10 million, and he can do it. Before I even saw the news, I was explaining to the people around me that a minister can say, “In this electoral district I will give 50,000 or 70,000 votes,” and mobilise people with real empowerment and real impact. They will get it done.

We know Wike has political capacity, and not just because of that announcement. I have written that the way he delivered Rivers in 2023 should be studied and taught in universities to anyone going into politics. He delivered the presidency to the APC, while every Senate and House of Representatives seat in the state went to the PDP. None of those candidates won on the APC ticket. Even people who think they know too much do not know how to split a ballot like that, voting one party at the top and another below. To put that in place, you must be a leader with real political capacity who understands political strategy. He is a man to be reckoned with in Nigerian politics.
We also saw what happened in Rivers and how he recovered his leadership position there. He is passionate about Tinubu’s return because his own political sustainability and relevance are tied to Tinubu being re-elected.

At the inauguration of the campaign council at the banquet hall, he said he has two assignments, to deliver Abuja and to deliver the Rivers. He also said that if you do not deliver your state, you should not say “Tinubu won” or “we won.” That is true. People should be rewarded according to what they bring to the table. If you have given much, you get much, and if you have given little, you get little. He who sows sparingly reaps sparingly, and he who sows bountifully reaps bountifully.

So we should not reward people with no capacity, no political value and no influence. I will not call them by the harsh name they deserve. They cannot even get 50 or 100 people to follow them in their own ward or polling unit. That is not leadership and that is not capacity. If every political appointee in Tinubu’s government is ready to deliver their state, they know what to do. They should go and show it by working.

Seyi Tinubu has shown capacity in his own way. He has brought different people together. He has pulled in people who were not on the President’s side for example the NANS president and has won over some of the opposition’s youth leaders. Yesterday I saw him host the son of the Vice Presidential candidate of the APM, and also the son of Atiku, and they promised to deliver for the President.

He has capacity, but where much is given, much is expected, and he can do more. I believe he needs gift of men around him, because the people a leader surrounds himself with decide how much he can produce. He has the resources and he is close to power, so with the right people he would have produced even more.

I want to stop at these five for now. The ministers and everyone else scrambling around to be reappointed are not showing capacity, at least not to me. Capacity is what you deliver in your state, your political ward, your polling unit and your local government. It is how many people you can prove you have empowered and impacted, and how many communities.

I have always said that we are the ones with an organic vote across the country, and we can say so boastfully. We can say we will deliver Rigasa because of the electricity we have facilitated there. We can say we will deliver Kwara South because of the army battalion we brought to them. We can point to the civil servants who now have CNG and electric cars to ease their transportation, we can easily deliver them. These are impacts that can turn into votes.

That is the political capacity I am talking about: policy becomes impact, and impact becomes political mobilisation. That is our strategy, and it is why we are bringing something new. We are different and we are unique.

Political capacity is not just mobilising on election day. Let people mobilise now, and let them keep mobilising until the President is re-elected. We even want the election to be over by 2:00 PM, because the President has done so well and has empowered so many people. By extension, we expect those people to keep working, taking their own resources to mobilise people every day to vote for the President.

As time goes on, we hope other ministers in Tinubu’s government, should learn from the people listed above. They need to build capacity of their own, the kind that justifies the positions they hold and lasts beyond any one administration. They should be able to negotiate in any political setting, speak to any community and mobilise votes across social classes with full confidence, knowing he will deliver.

Bamidele Atoyebi is the convenor of BAT Ideological Group, National Coordinator of Accountability and Policy Monitoring and a publisher at Unfiltered and Mining Reporting and political social worker