The Door-to-Door Team Yayi has mobilised 31,806 grassroots canvassers across Ogun State as part of an aggressive voter mobilisation campaign aimed at tackling voter apathy and securing over three hundred thousand votes for the All Progressives Congress (APC) in the 2027 general elections.
The State Coordinator of the Door-to-Door Team Yayi, Hon. Niyi Opeibi, disclosed this on Tuesday during the formal inauguration of the canvassers at the Ake Palace Pavilion, Abeokuta.
The event brought together representatives from the 20 local government areas of the state for the activation of the grassroots mobilisation structure.
Opeibi said the initiative was designed to take the campaign directly to households, communities, wards and streets, while encouraging eligible voters to participate actively in the electoral process.
He described the inauguration as the beginning of a coordinated people-to-people campaign aimed at communicating what the team described as the records and programmes of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, Governor Dapo Abiodun and Senator Solomon Olamilekan Adeola, popularly known as Yayi.
“Today is more than a gathering; it is the formal activation of a movement built around grassroots engagement, people-to-people connection and purposeful mobilisation. We are not simply inaugurating canvassers; we are inaugurating a mission,” Opeibi said.
According to him, the canvassers would engage market women, farmers, artisans, youths, elderly people, women, community leaders and other stakeholders, while also listening to their concerns.
He urged the canvassers to operate with discipline, humility, integrity and respect, warning them against violence, confrontation, insults and the dissemination of false information.
“Our strength must come from facts, performance, persuasion and genuine connection with the people. Wherever we go, let our conduct reflect the values and discipline of the Door-to-Door Team Yayi in our wards, our streets and our communities,” he said.
Opeibi said the grassroots mobilisation was necessary to ensure that the achievements attributed to Senator Yayi were communicated directly to residents rather than being restricted to political meetings, social media platforms and newspaper reports.
He listed education, healthcare, infrastructure, agriculture, markets, empowerment and human capital development among areas in which he said the senator had recorded interventions.
“These achievements must not remain confined to political meetings, social media or newspaper pages. They must be taken directly to the people, explained clearly and communicated responsibly,” Opeibi said.
Also speaking, Hon. Kayode Oladele described the inauguration as the actualisation of a project established to support Senator Yayi, saying the structure had brought together support groups and movement volunteers committed to the re-election of President Tinubu and the emergence of Yayi as Governor of Ogun State.
“What you are seeing here today is the actualisation of a project set up for Senator Yayi in Ogun West. What you are seeing here today is a convergence of support group members and movement volunteers working for the re-election of the President and the election of Senator Olamilekan Yayi as the Governor of Ogun State,” Oladele said.
He said some of those involved in the initiative were neither politicians nor APC members, but individuals who, according to him, had assessed the performances of President Tinubu and Senator Yayi and voluntarily decided to support them.
“They are not politicians. They are not members of the APC. They are people who have seen the good work that has been done by the President and our Senator, who have come together,” he said.
Oladele identified voter apathy as one of the major challenges the initiative seeks to address, recalling that only about 600,000 voters participated in previous elections out of an estimated 2.6 million eligible voters in the state.
“Considering the past elections in the State—where out of about 2.6 million people, only about 600,000 came out to vote—we want to make a difference this time around,” he said.
“Where are the votes? Where are the remaining two million people?”
He said the emergence of newly eligible voters, including young people who had recently attained voting age and those who previously had no opportunity to register, made direct grassroots engagement imperative.
“We want to ensure that we take the campaign to their doorsteps. We’ll take the campaign into their communities, into their households, into their families, to explain the activities of the President and of the Governor-to-be to them so that we can encourage them and earn their confidence,” Oladele said.
He attributed voter apathy partly to declining confidence in the political system, arguing that the performance of the candidates would be used to rebuild voters’ confidence.
“You know, one of the reasons why people don’t come out to vote is because they really don’t have confidence in the system. But this time around, they have seen what our Senator is doing, although he is yet to become the Governor,” he said.
“No senatorial district in Ogun State today can come out and say they have not seen the handiwork of Senator Olamilekan Yayi. In the same way, what our President is doing.”
Oladele said the ultimate objective was to secure strong electoral support across every constituency, local government and senatorial district for the APC.
“What we are doing is to ensure that, at least, every constituency, every local government, every senatorial district, can deliver en masse very well for the re-election of the President as well as the election of our candidate, Senator Olamilekan Yayi,” he added.
Meanwhile, Princess Ebunlomo Aderemi Arajunla, one of the promoters of the initiative, said the Door-to-Door project would place youths at the centre of the grassroots mobilisation effort while creating opportunities for them to participate in political activities and governance.
Arajunla described the initiative as an unprecedented grassroots project designed to deploy young people to households across the state to canvass support for President Tinubu and the APC.
“What we want to do, we call it ‘Door-to-Door’. The Door-to-Door project is an unprecedented initiative. We want to actively involve our youth by giving them employment opportunities and a role in government,” she said.
She said the youths would move from house to house and door to door to campaign for President Tinubu, with a target of securing 80 per cent of the votes.
“As a youth and a native of Ogun State, we want them to lead this door-to-door campaign. Unlike the previous election outcomes—which we do not want to see or hear repeated in Nigeria—this effort aims to mobilise a massive vote for the party,” Arajunla said.
Recalling the APC’s performance in the previous election, she said the new mobilisation strategy was aimed at significantly increasing the party’s vote haul.
“Unlike the last election where we secured around 200,000-plus votes, this time we are targeting over one million votes,” she said.
On his part, the Director of Media, Comrade Adeleke Akanbi, said the Door-to-Door Team Yayi was fully prepared for the campaign, as all grassroots mobilisers had been mandated to move from house to house, including religious centres, in their respective communities.
He noted that the strategy was expected to generate unprecedented support for Senator Solomon Olamilekan Adeola (Yayi), President Bola Ahmed Tinubu and other APC candidates in the 2027 elections.
Akanbi further said Senator Yayi had made the canvassers’ task easier by touching virtually every local government area in Ogun State through various projects, interventions and welfare programmes.
