Yari Messengers Holds Strategic Engagement on Women’s Participation

Yari Messengers brought women together for a strategic engagement centred on participation, grassroots organisation and collective action. The gathering created a setting for dialogue about women's involvement in the movement and the coordination of its activities within communities.

The engagement formed part of Yari Messengers' support for President Bola Ahmed Tinubu and Vice President Kashim Shettima ahead of 2027. Ahmad Abdulaziz Yari serves as National Convener of the movement, whose wider organisational work includes coordination across the Northern states.

Women at the centre of the conversation

The subject of the gathering was women's participation. The engagement brought that subject together with practical questions of organisation: how participants connect with one another, coordinate their activities and contribute within their communities.

Women take part in public life through many different relationships and responsibilities. Their experiences of work, family, education and community activity can shape the concerns they bring to a discussion. An engagement focused on their involvement creates room for those experiences to enter the organisational conversation directly.

Within Yari Messengers, the gathering addressed participation as part of the movement's grassroots activities. It provided an opportunity for dialogue among women involved in that work, with coordination and collective action forming part of the discussion.

Moving from individual interest to organisation

An organisation is made up of people who need ways to work together. Individual interest is a starting point, but activities also depend on communication, shared understanding and clarity about responsibilities. Those practical concerns sit behind the idea of grassroots coordination.

The women's engagement brought participation and organisation into the same setting. Its focus went beyond the presence of people at a gathering to the relationships involved in working within communities. Unity was considered alongside the coordination needed for collective activity.

That relationship between people and structure is important in any movement. A central leadership can establish a direction, but local activity depends on the people carrying out the work and the connections between them. Dialogue provides a way for those different levels of an organisation to remain in contact.

The wider Yari Messengers structure

Yari Messengers works across the Northern states. Its National Executive has met Ahmad at his Abuja office to discuss stronger organisational structures, deeper grassroots engagement and the coordination of activities across the region.

Those discussions provide the broader organisational setting for the women's engagement. The National Executive meeting considered the movement's overall structures, while the women's gathering focused on participation and coordination within its particular community of participants.

The two settings address related questions. An organisation needs leadership and a working structure, but it also needs people to feel that their involvement has a clear place. The women's engagement brought attention to that participation within the wider movement.

Ahmad's role as National Convener

As National Convener, Ahmad's responsibilities concern the leadership and organisation of Yari Messengers. His meetings with the National Executive relate to the movement's own work and its coordination across the Northern states.

The role is one part of his public responsibilities. He also serves as Patron of Yari Sport Initiative and as an Executive Board Member of the City Boy Movement Governing Council, while his foundation focuses on charitable empowerment and community support.

Each setting has its own purpose. Yari Messengers is a grassroots political organisation, and the women's engagement belongs to that work. Its focus was dialogue, participation and coordination, with women taking a central place in the movement's activities and preparations.

The value of dialogue

A gathering offers people time to address shared concerns in the same space. Participants can consider how their involvement relates to the organisation as a whole and how coordination affects the activities closest to their communities.

Dialogue is useful because public participation is not experienced in exactly the same way by everyone. People bring different levels of experience, different responsibilities and different amounts of time. An organisation benefits from recognising those circumstances when thinking about how members can contribute.

The strategic engagement provided a setting for that conversation within Yari Messengers. Unity and closer coordination were part of its purpose, with renewed commitment to grassroots activities forming part of the wider preparation for the coming political season.

Participation within communities

Grassroots activity takes place where people live and maintain everyday relationships. That setting gives participation a practical dimension: communication has to reach people, responsibilities need to be understood and collective activities depend on cooperation.

Women's involvement belongs within those everyday relationships. The engagement recognised their place in the movement's work by making participation the central subject of the gathering. It connected the organisation's wider political purpose with dialogue among people involved at community level.

The occasion brought these concerns together under Yari Messengers: women, organisation, unity and coordination. Its significance lay in giving those connected subjects a shared setting, with the movement's participants at the centre of the conversation about how its grassroots work is carried forward.