Cover image: First Lady Senator Oluremi Tinubu

Every political journey has its visible protagonists.

History of political spouses

There is the candidate, the campaign, the crowds, the rallies and, ultimately, the votes. But behind many historic political journeys are people whose contributions are less easily captured in campaign posters or ballot papers.

Among them are the spouses who choose, despite the pressures of public life, to stand beside their partners when the road becomes difficult. It is an often underestimated role.

The Constitution may define the powers of a President, but it does not define the emotional architecture that sustains a person carrying the weight of a nation.

It does not describe the person who listens when the cameras are switched off, who understands the pressure behind the public smile, who watches a spouse become the subject of national controversy, or who must decide whether to retreat into private life or step forward into the political storm.

Around the world, First Ladies and First Spouses have answered that question differently. Michelle Obama became one of the most compelling modern examples of a First Lady who embraced public life as a platform for service.

She developed causes and initiatives of her own, travelled extensively, spoke directly to citizens and became a powerful communicator of the Obama administration’s broader values, while remaining an important partner to Barack Obama through the demands of his presidency and political career.

Her model demonstrated that a First Lady need not be a ceremonial appendage to the President; she can become a force multiplier, using access and visibility to strengthen causes, communities and the broader social mission surrounding an administration.

But the history of political spouses also reminds us that there is no single template for standing beside a political leader.

Melania Trump offered a strikingly different model during Donald Trump’s 2024 return to the presidential campaign.

She was largely absent from the campaign trail, appearing selectively rather than becoming a constant presence at rallies and political events.

Her public role was shaped by a preference for privacy and selectivity, and although she eventually made appearances in support of her husband, including a surprise appearance at Madison Square Garden shortly before the election, she largely remained away from the daily theatre of the campaign. Reports also indicated that her influence did not disappear simply because her public appearances were limited; she remained a private sounding board for her husband.

Her example is important because it demonstrates that there are different ways of being a political spouse.

Public political conversation

One may support privately, advise quietly and appear selectively, or one may choose the more demanding route of visibility, travelling, speaking, mobilising, meeting people and allowing one’s own reputation to become part of the public political conversation.

Senator Oluremi Tinubu has unmistakably chosen the latter.To describe her simply as the wife of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu would be to miss much of the story.

Before she became Nigeria’s First Lady, Senator Oluremi Tinubu had already lived a substantial public life of her own. She served in the Senate, participated in Nigeria’s political life and developed her own convictions and public identity.

The presidency expanded her platform, but it did not create her. The more interesting question is what she has chosen to do with that platform, and over the last several months the answer has become increasingly visible.

She has travelled across the country, engaged women and communities, spoken to young people, participated in political and social initiatives and increasingly placed herself in the difficult space where national leadership, grassroots mobilisation and public communication intersect. She has chosen not to remain at the edge of the political conversation, but to enter it.

That choice comes with a cost. Public visibility creates exposure, and exposure creates vulnerability. In the age of instant headlines, social media clips and political polarisation, the distance between what a public figure says and what the public believes she said can sometimes be measured in seconds.

Senator Tinubu has had her share of this experience.

She has been criticised, scrutinised and, on occasions, had her words interpreted through partisan lenses or separated from the context in which they were delivered.

Controversy and Clarification

Some of her remarks have generated controversy and required explanation or clarification.

But perhaps the more revealing part of the story is not that she has escaped controversy; she plainly has not. It is that controversy has not driven her out of the arena.

She has continued to show up. That matters because courage in public life is not the absence of criticism. It is the ability to continue fulfilling one’s responsibilities when criticism arrives.

It is easy to stand beside power when the crowd is applauding; it requires a different kind of conviction to remain visible when applause becomes argument.

This is where Senator Oluremi Tinubu’s story becomes more than a story about political loyalty. It becomes a story about partnership, public service and the practical use of influence.

Renewed Hope Initiative

Over the past three years, the Renewed Hope Initiative associated with the First Lady has become a significant platform for interventions touching women’s empowerment, education, health, humanitarian support and social welfare.

A review published earlier this year reported that the initiative had mobilised and disbursed more than ₦100 billion over its first three years through direct interventions, donations and multi-year commitments.

The number is significant, but numbers alone do not tell the human story. The more important question is what influence enables other people to do.

A speech may inspire someone for an afternoon; a resource can enable that person to do something tomorrow.

That is why some of Senator Tinubu’s recent interventions deserve to be considered through the lens of capacity rather than simply generosity.

Provision of vehicles to APC women leaders

In June 2026, for instance, she announced the provision of vehicles to APC women leaders in Abia, Anambra, Bauchi, Osun and Oyo, particularly women working in states where the APC does not control the governorship.

The significance goes beyond the vehicles themselves. Grassroots politics, like grassroots development, requires infrastructure.

A woman leader cannot reach communities she cannot travel to.

A political structure can possess passion, commitment and people, but without the tools to activate that commitment, enthusiasm can eventually become exhaustion. Mobility creates access, access creates connection, connection creates organisation, and organisation creates participation.

What appears on the surface to be a simple donation can therefore become an investment in the ability of people to do the work they have been asked to do.

APC National Youth Wing

That same logic is visible in the recent intervention that is particularly close to me: the presentation of nine buses to the APC National Youth Wing.

I received those buses on Friday, and therefore I do not speak about them merely as an observer reading a press statement.

I saw what the intervention means to a youth structure that has carried enormous responsibilities while often contending with logistical limitations and the weariness that comes when young people are expected to carry national responsibilities without adequate institutional support. Nine buses do not solve every problem, but they solve one important problem: movement.

They give young leaders greater capacity to travel into communities, support programmes across states, connect with young Nigerians beyond the familiar centres of political activity and take national engagement closer to the grassroots. In that sense, the buses are more than vehicles.

They are organisational infrastructure. They carry people, but they also carry ideas, programmes, conversations and possibilities.The same philosophy extends beyond the immediate political environment.

INSPIRE, the Inclusive Network for Supporting Progressive Leadership

In May, Senator Tinubu launched INSPIRE, the Inclusive Network for Supporting Progressive Leadership, Innovation, Reform and Equity for Women, aimed at strengthening women’s leadership, inclusion and professional advancement within Nigeria’s Federal Civil Service.

That intervention is important because it illustrates another dimension of her public role: influence is not necessarily most valuable when it is used to make oneself more prominent; it is most valuable when it makes other people more capable.

The legacy of a First Lady should therefore not be measured only by rallies attended or political structures mobilised.

It can also be measured by the women whose confidence grows, the young people who become more engaged, the institutions that become better equipped and the citizens who discover that their participation matters.

And perhaps that is the most interesting measure of Senator Oluremi Tinubu’s influence: not simply what she does herself, but what her example causes other people to do.

Mummy’s Men (and Women) Movement

This is where the emergence of the Mummy’s Men (and Women) Movement becomes particularly intriguing.

The idea began with a simple question: if Mummy is doing her part, what should her followers be doing? It is a question that captures something larger than the creation of another political support group. It speaks to the multiplier effect of example.

One person acts, another observes, inspiration follows, and inspiration eventually becomes organisation and participation.

If Mummy is walking the road, there should be followers and fans willing to walk it with her too.

That is the most compelling way to understand Mummy’s Men Movement. It is not simply about praising the First Lady. It is about responding to example with action.

If a woman can travel across the country, invest her time, strengthen structures, support women, empower young people and continue to participate despite the inevitable criticism that accompanies public life, then perhaps the appropriate response from men who admire that example is not merely applause but contribution.

Admiration watches; influence moves

And perhaps Senator Oluremi Tinubu’s most enduring contribution at this stage of her public journey may eventually be found not only in the things she personally accomplished, but in the number of people she inspired to decide that they too should carry some weight on the road.It is important, however, not to reduce her story to loyalty to her husband.

That would diminish both the woman and the office she occupies. Senator Tinubu is entitled to be understood as a public figure in her own right, with her own political history, interests, convictions and record of service. Nor should the contrast with Melania Trump be interpreted as a judgement about which model is superior.

Melania exercised her agency through a largely private and selective role, maintaining influence without embracing the daily visibility of the campaign trail. Senator Oluremi Tinubu has exercised hers differently.

She has chosen to be visible, to travel, to engage, to mobilise and to place her reputation into the public arena. Both approaches demonstrate that there is no single way for a political spouse to support a partner.

What makes Senator Tinubu’s choice distinctive is the scale of her public participation and her willingness to remain present even when that visibility exposes her to criticism.That willingness deserves to be understood in its proper context.

The road to an election will ultimately be measured in votes, and those votes belong to Nigerians. But political journeys are made long before Election Day.

Standing beside a political leader does not mean declaring that he is beyond criticism, nor does it require a spouse to surrender her individuality. Political support and democratic accountability can exist together.

A healthy democracy requires scrutiny, disagreement and the freedom to question those in power. But within that democratic space, a spouse can still decide that she will stand with her husband, contribute to the work around him and use the access that comes with her position to strengthen people and institutions.

The President carries the constitutional burden of governing the country; the First Lady does not share that constitutional mandate. Yet she can help strengthen the social, humanitarian, political and human ecosystem around the presidency.

That is a legitimate form of public service.Perhaps this is what makes the present chapter of Senator Oluremi Tinubu’s public life so compelling.

She has accepted the paradox of being a First Lady: she occupies an office that is not constitutionally defined in the same way as elected political offices, yet she possesses a platform powerful enough to shape public conversation; she does not sit in the President’s chair, yet she can strengthen the people and structures around him; she is not the principal actor in the electoral contest, yet her visibility can affect the political atmosphere in which that contest takes place. She has chosen to embrace rather than avoid that paradox. And with that choice has come scrutiny.

It has brought applause in some places and criticism in others, moments of celebration and moments of controversy. But there is something dignified about the decision to remain present when disappearing would be easier.

The public sees the President at the podium, the campaign, the crowds and the speeches.

What it does not see is the invisible architecture of political life: the private conversations, the counsel, the emotional support, the family pressures and the people who decide, in their own way, whether to carry some part of the burden.

Senator Oluremi Tinubu has chosen to carry some of it in public.

The road to an election will ultimately be measured in votes, and those votes belong to Nigerians. But political journeys are made long before Election Day.

They are made in conversations across states, in meetings with women, in youth engagements, in community visits, in the strengthening of grassroots structures and in the countless acts of support that make participation possible.

They are made when a woman leader receives the means to reach communities that were previously difficult to access; when a young organiser is given the mobility to travel; when a civil servant sees a pathway to leadership; and when men who have watched the First Lady’s example decide that they too should become participants rather than spectators.

That, perhaps, is the deeper story behind Remi Tinubu and the road to the President’s re-election. It is not simply the story of a woman accompanying her husband on a political journey.

It is the story of a woman who has increasingly chosen to make that journey visible, to turn influence into practical support and to inspire others to contribute their own weight to the road.

She has not been a woman without critics, nor has she been a woman who has never been misunderstood.

She has been tested by the peculiar pressures of public life, yet she has continued to show up.History will eventually judge the Tinubu presidency by its policies, outcomes, successes, failures and the lived experiences of Nigerians. The electorate will make its decision in accordance with its convictions.

That is the proper order of democracy. But alongside that history, there will also be the quieter story of those who walked the road with the principal actor, strengthened the people around him and chose not to retreat when the journey became difficult.

Senator Oluremi Tinubu has chosen to walk.

And perhaps that is what courage sometimes looks like: not the absence of noise, not the certainty that everyone will understand you, not a life without criticism, but the quiet determination to keep moving when the road becomes difficult.

If Mummy is walking the road, perhaps the most fitting response from those inspired by her is not simply to watch.It is to walk too.

∆ Dayo Israel is the National Youth Leader of the APC and the Convenor of the Mummy’s Men Movement, and he writes from Abuja.