From one million march to 20 million votes: The business of political support groups

By Egena Sunday Ode

I have watched this movie before, and it is playing again. It’s simply the latest in town.

On Monday I saw Vice President Kashim Shettima inaugurate the Transporters Support Group for President Bola Tinubu ahead of the January 16, 2027 polls, and I immediately remembered how familiar the script sounded. The pitch did not change. We have the numbers, we have the structure from national down to the LGAs, we have a database, and we will deliver. This time the figure being thrown around is 20 million votes. That was after they first mentioned 8 million. And with INEC telling us that 100 million Nigerians are registered to vote, claiming to deliver a fifth of the entire register by one group is not only bold but ambitious, to say the least.

For me the most telling part was not the number. It was the reason they gave. The coordinator said transporters have been supporting every government, but hardly got the full dividend of democracy. So this time they want to organize properly, work with data, and negotiate from a position of strength. I understood that. In politics, if you are not organized you are invisible. But I also know where this road has led us before.

This is not new. It is a recurring trend, and each election cycle comes with its own style and its own arithmetic. I remember the transition period under the late Head of State, General Sani Abacha. Even then, faced and faceless groups came out to canvass support for the sitting government, sometimes against the run of public opinion. The one I remember most was the talk of a one million man march to ask Abacha to transmute from military ruler to civilian president. It was never really about policy. It was about showing crowd, showing noise, showing that somebody had backing.

Since then we Nigerians have only become more creative. Ahead of 2023, I followed about 200 support groups that came together under COSGAS, the Coalition of Support Groups for Asiwaju Shettima. They came to Abuja and announced that they had already captured 13.5 million people in a database and that they would rake in 10 million votes for the APC ticket. They said it was real, that it was drawn from all 36 states, and that they had been building the structure since 2018. I remember thinking at the time that the verification of PVCs would be the real test, because a database is not the same thing as a ballot cast in secret.

And it did not stop there. Other groups jumped in with their own promises. There was the South Agenda for Tinubu/Shettima promising a landslide in the zone. There were the Ahmed Tinubu Canvassers telling Nigerians to vote massively. Even inside the APC, some leaders complained that certain support groups were de-marketing the candidate by begging him publicly to run, as if pressure was the strategy.

Now we are in the build-up to 2027 and the numbers have only gotten bigger. In Ondo I have been reading about BTO4PBAT, led by the Minister of Interior, Hon. Olubunmi Tunji-Ojo. At the inauguration of their Unit to Unit structure in April 2026, the Minister declared the president’s re-election non-negotiable and said the groups should go and sell the administration’s record on economy, education and infrastructure. They have set a target of 90 percent of Ondo’s votes, and they are talking about a network across 18 LGAs, 203 wards and 3,933 polling units. That is granular, isn’t it?

But it is not only a southern story. Some of the loudest voices in this “vote delivery” business have come from the North. COSGAS itself, with “Shettima” in its name, had most of its early coordinators in northern states and was inaugurated in Abuja. The Renewed Agenda Group, TRAG, is led nationally by Dr. Umar Tanko Yakasai and says it came out of four platforms that worked in 2023. Even the transporters’ group, inaugurated by the VP, drew goodwill messages from NURTW and NACTOMORAS leaders whose strongest bases are in Kano, Kaduna and the North West. From Arewa for Tinubu to various clerics’ platforms, the template is the same: promise a bloc, show structure, and negotiate access. The business is national, even if the accents differ.

Then there is TRAG, the National Movement for Tinubu–Shettima 2027. They say they are more than another support club. They came out of four platforms that worked in 2023, and their own promise is interesting to me because it is not just about votes. They are saying there must be life after the election, that members should interface with MDAs and not be treated as disposable political foot soldiers. I paused when I read that, because it is the most honest thing I have heard in a long while. It admits what we all know but rarely say out loud: that for many people, joining a support group is business.

So what has changed between Abacha’s time and now? Three things, from where I sit. First is scale. We moved from one million to ten million to twenty million. As the voter register grows, the promises grow too. Second is professionalization. Nobody is just printing T-shirts anymore. They are talking databases, WhatsApp channels, LGA coordinators, PVC verification. The transporters’ leader even said, “we are not talking for talking’s sake, we are talking because we are working with data.” Third is commercialization. These groups are now a marketplace. It is about access, contracts, appointments, empowerment.

I am not against association. I believe in it. Democracy needs people to organize. Transporters move goods and people. They also move voters on election day. Women groups, youth groups, student groups, they all matter. But I keep asking myself three questions whenever I hear these big announcements.

Can anyone truly deliver votes? I doubt it. I have stood in polling units. I know that once the curtain closes, it is just you and the ballot. You can promise your group leader, you can collect a T-shirt, but the mark you make is yours. So when we hear 20 million out of 100 million, I worry that we are beginning to talk about citizens like cargo.

The question is: are we measuring enthusiasm or entitlement? From Abacha’s march to COSGAS’ 10 million to this new 20 million, the pattern is consistent. Inflate the figure, get relevance, then go and negotiate. The danger is that governance starts to look like a settlement with groups instead of service to people.

And will the structure survive after 2027? That is the question TRAG is trying to answer early. If these groups can turn mobilization into real programmes, and if government can meet them with delivery beyond elections, then maybe we are moving from rallies to institutions. If not, we will do what we always do: mobilize, win, and abandon.

I say this as someone who has covered elections and also voted in them. Organization wins elections. The party with the better ground game usually carries the day. Support groups fill gaps that formal party structures cannot fill because they are closer to the people and they are nimble. But when the only metric becomes how many millions can you deliver, we reward exaggeration instead of engagement. We also create the impression that elections are won by deals with a few leaders, instead of by convincing millions of individuals.

So I take the transporters’ 20 million target, the BTO’s 90 percent Ondo target, and COSGAS’ 10 million from 2023 as what they are: opening bids. They are meant to get a seat at the table.

As we walk toward January 16, 2027, I hope we remember what the Vice President himself said at that inauguration. He said elections must not be treated as warfare but as a democratic process through which Nigerians freely express their interests. He also said the future must be argued in the open, tested by citizens and decided through credible elections. I agree with him.

A 20-million-vote promise sounds sweet to the ears. But what Nigeria needs are 100 million registered voters who understand their choices and are free to make them. Let the groups mobilize. Let the government deliver. And let the people decide. That, for me, is the only arithmetic that finally counts.