By Johnson Momodu
Politics often reveals itself not in the noise of grandstanding but in quiet pivots that refocus the moral gravitas of a nation. In Enugu, at Peter Obi’s formal declaration and defection to the African Democratic Congress (ADC) on the final day of 2025, one such pivot unfolded with a clarity that refused to be ignored. Amid the predictable theatre of Nigerian political realignments, Aisha Yesufu stepped forward and said something deceptively simple. For the first time in her life, she was joining a political party as a card-carrying member.
It was not framed as an achievement. It was offered as a reckoning. The significance lay elsewhere.
In a political culture accustomed to transactional loyalty and ceremonial conversions, the statement landed with unusual weight. Yesufu was not crossing a carpet in search of comfort. She was crossing a threshold of consequence.
For a woman whose public life has been defined by resistance without permission and advocacy without patronage, this moment marked a deliberate escalation. The conscience that had long stood outside the gates was now walking into the compound.
Yesufu’s words in Enugu were spare but uncompromising. She spoke of hunger, not as a slogan to be chanted and forgotten, but as a daily assault on dignity stalking Nigerian homes. She spoke of impoverishment as an outcome of governance, not an unfortunate coincidence. And she placed responsibility firmly where it belongs, at the feet of the All Progressives Congress (APC) administration under President Bola Ahmed Tinubu. Reject bad leadership, she urged. Unite against a system that has normalised despair.
There was no theatrics in her delivery. No indulgence in applause lines. Just moral clarity, calmly asserted.
This has always been Aisha Yesufu’s signature. She has never trafficked in euphemism. Where others soften truths to preserve access, she sharpens them to provoke accountability. Her activism has been marked by an insistence that Nigeria must confront itself honestly or not at all. From co-founding the Bring Back Our Girls movement that forced the world to pay attention to the Chibok abductions, to her fearless presence during the EndSARS protests against police brutality, Yesufu has remained stubbornly consistent.
Accountability. Justice. Human dignity. These are not rhetorical flourishes in her vocabulary. They are demands.
For years, she occupied a rare and uncomfortable space in Nigeria’s civic life. Relentlessly political without being partisan. Fiercely ideological without being doctrinaire. Always present at the pressure points of national conscience, yet careful not to be absorbed by the machinery she was challenging. Her politics lived in the streets, in courtrooms, on timelines, and in the unyielding insistence that Nigerian citizenship must mean more than endurance.
This is why the Enugu moment matters. It is not about party branding or electoral choreography. It is about intent. An acknowledgement that the scale of Nigeria’s crisis has outgrown the comfort of permanent protest. That civic pressure, however righteous, eventually exhausts itself if it does not find expression in the arena where decisions are formalised and budgets are signed.
Yesufu understands this terrain. Her transition from social media storm to street level generalissimo, and now to card-carrying party member, completes a compelling arc. It suggests not retreat, but evolution. The protester seeking to institutionalise protest. The critic now prepared to shoulder the burden of proposing alternatives. Not because the system deserves her faith, but because the people deserve her persistence.
In Enugu, she framed the coming political contest not as a game of thrones, but as national triage. This was not partisan point-scoring. It was an indictment of a governing philosophy that has normalised hunger and cloaked impoverishment in technocratic language. Her call is for unity, not as a sentimental appeal, but as a coalition of the inconvenienced. A refusal to accept suffering as policy collateral.
What distinguishes Yesufu’s politics is its unapologetically pro-people orientation. She speaks of hunger before growth figures. Of leadership before spin. Of unity not as a slogan, but as a shared refusal to accept bad governance. In a polity addicted to deflection, her insistence on naming responsibility feels almost radical.
There is also something quietly subversive about her decision to foreground her party membership as a first. In Nigeria, party affiliation is often worn as a badge of entitlement, not conviction. Membership is a ladder, not a burden. By contrast, Yesufu has framed hers as an ethical escalation. A conscious choice to take responsibility for outcomes, not merely to critique them.
Her alignment with the ADC, in the context of Peter Obi’s defection, taps into a broader mood in the country. Whatever one’s view of Obi’s political calculations, the moment symbolised a yearning for alternatives that speak to competence, restraint, and empathy. Yesufu’s presence reinforced that sentiment. She did not appear as a surrogate or a cheerleader. She spoke as a citizen who has decided that the fight must now enter the room where power resides.
Crucially, she brings into party politics something Nigerian governance sorely lacks. Credibility earned outside office. She has never needed appointments to validate her voice or her concern for the country. She has never relied on elite approval to remain relevant. Her authority has been forged in confrontation, not conferred by patronage. That independence gives weight to her choices. When Aisha Yesufu moves, it is not because she has been authorised. It is because she has calculated that the moment demands it.
Naturally, sceptics will ask the obvious question: can the fierce, unbending ethics of activism survive within the compromise-laden machinery of party politics? It is a fair concern. Nigerian parties are not known for their hospitality to moral discomfort. They reward conformity and punish insistence. Yet if there is anyone whose public life suggests a tolerance for discomfort, it is Aisha Yesufu. She has never been interested in being liked. She has always been interested in being useful.
Her presence in Enugu suggested she believes this experiment must be attempted, regardless of the risks. She is betting that the energy which once galvanised mass protest can be channelled towards construction as well as critique. That the courage to resist can be repurposed into the discipline to rebuild. This is not naivety. It is resolve.
To be clear, Yesufu has never been under any illusion about the moral exhaustion of Nigerian governance. Her call was not for blind faith, but for collective resolve. A reminder that nations do not drift into renewal. They organise for it. And that bad leadership does not retire voluntarily. It is rejected at the polls.
In stepping into partisan politics, she is not abandoning her past. She is interrogating Nigeria’s future. Her journey from activist to participant represents something rare in our political life. A tangible, if arduous, pathway from critique to creation.
The podium in Enugu was therefore more than a platform for endorsement. It was a declaration of a deeper struggle. One for the soul of Nigerian governance. One that insists hunger is not destiny, impoverishment is not fate, and silence is not neutrality.
Aisha Yesufu did not shout in Enugu. She did not need to. The weight of her consistency over the years spoke for her. Calmly. Publicly. Now the hour has come. The protester has become a participant. The next test, for her as well as for the system she enters, is whether clarity and conviction can begin to alter the machinery of governance itself.
■ Johnson Momodu, political analyst, contributed this piece from Benin.
