As the January 16, 2027 presidential election approaches, field survey points clearly to a resounding victory for President Bola Ahmed Tinubu.
Some analysts describe the impending Tinubu victory as ‘electoral tsunami.’ One of the major actors pushing for the Tinubu victory is High Chief Government Oweizide Ekpemupolo (more commonly known as Tompolo).
In June, 2025, Tompolo, a Niger Delta scion and businessman, unveiled the PBAT Door-to-Door Movement, a strategic special purpose vehicle for the re-election of President Tinubu.
Tompolo understands politics and electoral processes. He knows that connecting with voters is far beyond social media noise and trends. To engage with real voters requires direct physical connections, visits, neighbourhood interactions and house-to-house engagements. It is a smart strategy prevalent in advanced and older democracies in which politicians create an ecosystem of volunteers, road-runners, and other actors whose duty is to directly mobilise voters at every nook and cranny. They liaise with both the young and old, male and female, with one singular message: Sell their candidate to the voters; ask potential voters questions, and return the feedback to their principal’s office. That way, they create a strong bond with the voting publics. It has the advantage of on-field identification of a candidate’s loyalists, non-loyalists and undecided voters.
This is the template Tompolo has designed to swing votes in favour of Tinubu. The movement’s chief objective is to take the Renewed Hope agenda of President Tinubu from ward-to-ward, street-to-street, and door-to-door across all 774 local government areas, wards, and polling units in Nigeria. The strategy aims to mobilise no fewer than 10 million votes for President Tinubu.
Nigeria has 774 local governments areas, 8,809 wards, and 176,846 polling units. Reaching across to voters in this vast and diverse community of electorate is never a piece of cake. It draws demand on logistics, efficient communication machinery, foot-soldiers of diverse tongues and religion. To achieve this, the Movement has appointed coordinators, ambassadors and sundry volunteers in every state. And every state has its own campaign vehicles to ease mobility. The ultimate goal is to take the message of development wrought by Tinubu in infrastructure, agriculture, healthcare, education, economic stability, social interventions, and others to every Nigerian in the North, South, East and West.
Already, the Movement has gathered momentum across the nation with support for Tinubu swelling. There is a strong reason to believe that Tompolo’s strategy is what Tinubu needs at the moment. Door-to-door marketing campaign strategy has worked in most places where it was deployed. Barack Obama, the first black man to become President of America used similar strategy in 2008 (Yes, We Can) campaign that swept out the Republicans and installed him as the 44th president of the United States. He used the same strategy for his re-election in 2012. On both occasions, Obama faced whirls of resistance from both Republicans and independents, first on account of his skin colour and on his re-election bid, on a propaganda that he ruined America economy. On both occasions, the resistance failed. Obama won. Post-Obama victory analyses point to his maverick door-to-door, face-to-face campaign strategy as chief driver of his victory.
This model was remodeled in France in 2012 when Socialist Francois Hollande won the French presidential election, beating incumbent centre-right Nicolas Sarkozy.
In the extant Nigeria context where propaganda, social media bullying and deliberate distortion of evidence-based metrics, are being deployed by a desperate armada of opposition, Tompolo’s door-to-door strategy is proving the most pragmatic approach to thaw the slew of anti-Tinubu propaganda. And it is working. From Benin to Birnin-Kebbi, Port Harcourt to Potiskum, Tompolo’s army of coordinators, ambassadors and volunteers are moving from street to street and door to door marketing the candidacy of Tinubu, using identifiable projects and feasible statistics, not the conjured figures and freak statistics being bandied by the opposition on social media.
What many do not understand is that social media is not always a true reflection of reality. In modern politics, a candidate may trend and wax with astonishing popularity on social media but such a candidate may not be the favourite of the actual voting publics. This is common in developing democracies like Nigeria. A majority of the actual voters are not on social media. Neither are they swayed by social media algorithms and viral videos. They are convinced by direct, face-to-face marketing of candidates which is the essence of the Tompolo movement.
Moving from market to market, making phone calls where necessary, engagement with focus groups in both urban and rural areas, knocking on doors and having face to face interaction with people do not only show respect to voters, they help to build trust in both the process and the candidate being marketed. Voters will always gravitate towards the candidate who visited them, empathised with them and made them feel a sense of belonging, not the one raging on social media. Through the door to door initiative, Tompolo is birthing hope in the voters by sharing with them and explaining why the Tinubu government is ensuring that their children are not forced out of school courtesy of NELFUND; that the investments in agriculture is to help farmers and keep farming profitable; that the network of road infrastructure being built is to ease the burden of movement of goods, services and human capital across the country.
The Tompolo foot soldiers do more than explain the core values of President Tinubu’s reform agenda and the benefits of the many projects dotting every part of the country, they also engage in voter education, helping voters to authenticate and confirm their voting centres. Beyond this, they have helped to prompt millions of newly registered voters to collect their PVCs. Such has been the behind-the-scene efforts of the PBAT Door-to-Door Movement driven by a ruthlessly pan-Nigeria patriot and statesman, High Chief Tompolo of Gbaramatu Kingdom, the oil-rich community in Warri South-West Local Government Area of Delta State.
Tompolo has never hidden his admiration for President Tinubu. He tells you he believes Tinubu is exactly the leader Nigeria needs now. He says Tinubu inherited a Nigeria that was at an inconvenient intersection between sliding deeper into a historical economic quagmire or stagnate until the situation becomes irredeemable. A weak leader will choose to muddle through the abyss, but not Tinubu. The President’s courage, vision, will power and a rare antecedent to dare the path others dread, have stood him out as the modern-day architect building a new Nigeria from the ruins of yesteryears. Tompolo says these leadership traits have made him an unapologetic apostle of Tinubunomics hence he is campaigning for the President to consolidate the multiple gains of his policies and decisions.
*Okude, a public policy analyst, writes from Abuja.
