01What we believe · Northern Nigeria
Campaign and grassroots mobilisation
through problem solving and community engagement.
We organise communities across Northern Nigeria by fixing what is broken in them. Wells sunk, a school re-roofed, a mosque rebuilt: the work is the message.
- Polling units
- 93,995
- LGAs
- 419
- States + FCT
- 19 + 1
- Northern zones
- 3
The register we organise against: the 19 northern states and the FCT, as INEC publishes it. The geography that exists, not a claim about our coverage.
- Go where the people are
- Plan outward from the centres, not around them. The communities furthest from a campaign office are the ones an organised network exists to reach.
- Understand the community
- Learn the local operating environment, the existing structures and the people who matter in them, before proposing anything.
- Build relationships
- Contact is the point. A relationship established through a conversation outlasts a rally that visited once and left.
- Organise locally
- Hand responsibility to a coordinator who lives there. Local leadership is what allows the structure to survive the end of a campaign.
Who we are
A movement built out of a campaign, and kept after it.
In the 2023 presidential campaign, UpNorth Ambassadors for Obi/Datti built a grassroots mobilisation network across Northern Nigeria, deliberately extending activity beyond the major urban centres into hard-to-reach communities, and training coordinators across the 19 northern states.
2023 was more than a campaign for us. It was the building of a grassroots operating network.
Read the 2023 record
What we do
Reach, coordination, amplification.
Three things that only work together. A message with no network never arrives; a network with no reach only ever talks to the same people.
Grassroots Reach
We deliberately work past the major urban centres and into hard-to-reach communities, particularly across the North East and North West, the places where organised political engagement usually never arrives.
What we doLocal Coordination
A decentralised structure of coordinators running from national coordination through zone and state down to the LGA, ward and community, so activity is organised by people who already live where it happens.
The networkDigital Amplification
Physical mobilisation combined with digital communication: social media, campaign messaging and content that carries what happened in a community out to everyone who could not be there.
Digital communicationFrom the field
The work, as it happened.
Every photograph on this site is from the movement's own field record.
Where the record is documented
Nine states, photographed.
Not a coverage figure. These are the places for which there is a picture on this site showing the work. Everything else we would have to ask you to take on trust, so we do not print it.
North West
Sokoto
State-wide activity
North West
Katsina
Kankia LGA · Dutsinma LGA · Shinkafi community
North West
Kano
Kano chapter
North West
Kaduna
Kachia LGA · Soba LGA
North East
Bauchi
Ganduwa LGA
North Central
Plateau
Bassa LGA
North Central
Niger
Niger chapter
North Central
Kogi
Okpo LGA · Olamaboro LGA · Dekina LGA · Ofu LGA
North Central
Nasarawa
Dausu ward, Toto LGA
How we organise
One loop, and it does not stop at the election.
We identify the community, understand the local environment, make contact through a lawful activity, organise the local volunteers, execute it, document it, turn it into communication, and measure what it reached. Then we start again with better information.
- 01
Identify
Identify the community, the activity or the requirement, and the geography it belongs to.
- 02
Understand
Understand the local operating environment, the existing structures and the people who matter in them.
- 03
Engage
Make contact through an appropriate, lawful community or campaign activity.
- 04
Organise
Coordinate local volunteers and coordinators, with clear assignments and named responsibility.
- 05
Execute
Deliver the planned activity on the ground.
- 06
Document
Capture photographs, video, attendance and field notes at the point it happens.
- 07
Amplify
Turn what happened into communication that reaches the people who were not there.
- 08
Measure
Review reach, participation and outcomes, then start again with better information.
The 2023 foundation
What that year established.
- 01Grassroots Reach
- 02Community Engagement
- 03Local Coordination
- 04Youth Mobilisation
- 05Digital Communication
- 06Field Operations
- 07Civic Participation
Community projects
A movement that only ever arrives to ask for something is one people learn to avoid.
A rebuilt almajiri school. A mosque taken back to the structure and finished. Wells sunk where there was no clean water. Murals painted on community walls, and a projector carried into villages after dark.
How we behave
What we will not do.
A grassroots movement is judged first on how it behaves in the communities it enters. This is the short version.
We organise lawfully and peacefully.
We do not induce voters.
We do not spread disinformation.
We do not run inauthentic digital activity.
We protect the people in our network.
We do not collect sensitive data about the public.
We publish no figure we cannot evidence.
What we are building
Building Africa’s next generation of political operations infrastructure.
- 01
Political intelligence
- 02
Field operations
- 03
Election technology
- 04
Strategic communications
Organise where you live.
Tell us your state, your LGA and the community you know. That is how the network grows: one person who is already there, rather than a team sent in from somewhere else.