Professor Martina Yilwatda’s public call for early mobilisation in support of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s re-election bid is unsurprising. It is also consequential.
Speaking at a Women’s Leadership Network gathering in Abuja, the wife of the APC national chairman urged women across the ruling party to “speak with one voice.”
She encouraged them to start grassroots sensitisation for the Renewed Hope Agenda. She also expressed support for the Reserved Seats for Women Bill that is now before the National Assembly.
At a tactical level this is party management. The APC’s women apparatus has been building a nationwide mobilisation platform. It is labelled Project 774. This platform is intended to reach all 774 local government areas.
The initiative is not new. It has been rolled out intermittently in states. It has been framed as both empowerment and political outreach. It is a vehicle by which the party seeks to turn modest gains in women’s engagement into tangible votes for 2027.
But there is a substantive policy overlay to the mobilisation. The Reserved Seats for Women Bill, also known as the Special Seats Bill, proposes the creation of additional elective seats exclusively for women. It suggests 37 new Senate seats and 37 new House of Representatives seats. Additionally, it proposes three more women’s seats per state assembly. This is intended as a temporary corrective measure to lift female representation.
If enacted, it would materially increase the number of women legislators. It would also reshape party calculations about candidate choice and voter outreach.
The political arithmetic is plain. Nigeria’s record on women’s representation remains embarrassingly low. Women occupy under 5 per cent of seats in the 10th National Assembly. Many state houses have no female legislators at all.
The Special Seats Bill’s proponents argue that the remedy is institutional. First, they suggest creating space. Then, they propose allowing women to consolidate power through legislating, oversight, and constituency service.
Critics counter that added seats risk tokenism and higher public expenditure. They argue these changes do not tackle the root causes of exclusion, like nomination gatekeeping and campaign funding shortfalls. Both positions are plausible; both are political.
What makes Yilwatda’s intervention significant is timing and endorsement. Early mobilisation from a figure so closely linked to the party chair gives the push both cachet and operational heft.
It signals presidential alignment with an approach that links gender inclusion to partisan advantage. Pro-Tinubu groups have vowed to organise at scale for 2027. The APC women’s machinery is clearly being positioned as a pillar of that effort.
Yet the move raises questions a careful correspondent must ask.
Will the Reserved Seats Bill, if passed, be used principally to expand genuine female representation or to reward patronage networks?
Will Project 774 become an empowerment vehicle or a mobilisation funnel that prioritises turnout over substantive capacity building?
History offers caution. Measures that expand representation can succeed only with reforms to party nomination processes. They must also have campaign finance and civic education reforms. These changes strengthen women’s independent electoral prospects.
The Special Seats Bill includes a sunset clause. It is pitched as temporary, but temporary measures can calcify into permanent advantages for those who control the machinery.
For voters and observers outside party circles, the test will be deliverables. If Project 774 provides genuine training, it will be beneficial. Additionally, financing and sustained support for women candidates are essential. If these are achieved, the political realignment will be salutary for Nigeria’s democracy.
If, however, the initiative becomes a top-down mobilisation exercise aimed primarily at shoring up a presidential re-election, the claim of ideological commitment to women’s inclusion will be empty. It will ring hollow.
In the months ahead, attention should focus on three indicators.
First, legislative progress. Will committees in the House and Senate advance the Reserved Seats Bill beyond briefing stages? Will they move it into a rigorous public hearing process? Recent reporting indicates movement in committee, but passage is far from assured.
Second, transparency around Project 774’s funding and candidate-support mechanisms.
Third, measurable change in women’s representation at state and federal levels, beyond headline figures. PLAC and civil society trackers will remain indispensable for verifying claims about increases in female participation.
Professor Yilwatda’s speech is a clarion call. It threads gender inclusion onto the ruling party’s electoral strategy. That fusion of policy and politics is not inherently improper.
What matters is whether it yields a stronger, more representative legislature, or simply a stronger electoral machine. The public, and especially women voters, deserve clarity and accountability on which it will be.
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