There is a question that ought to be asked of every public officer in Nigeria, and is asked too rarely: why do you serve?
Power answers that question in many voices. Some serve for office. Some serve for influence. Some serve for the season, and disappear with it. But there is a different answer, older than politics and steadier than any campaign cycle, and it is the answer Senator Sunday Steve Karimi has offered in his own words.
“Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.” — Philippians 2:4
“God is not unjust; he will not forget your work and the love you have shown him as you have helped his people and continue to help them.” — Hebrews 6:10
These two verses, the senator has said, inform his stance in politics. They are the foundation of what he describes as a desire “to establish a lasting legacy that my children and society will be proud of.” And he places the source of that endurance plainly: “this endeavour of adding value to humanity will persist through the Christ that strengthens me.”
It is a quiet confession in a noisy political environment. But for those who have followed his work in Kogi West, it is also a confession that explains a great deal.
The Pattern of a Faith-Shaped Public Life
Scripture frames service not as transaction but as stewardship. The believer is placed in a position not for personal elevation but for the welfare of others, and the measure of that stewardship is not what the steward retains, but what the steward releases.
Read in that light, the Karimi tenure begins to make a different kind of sense.
When 4,000 students across Kogi West receive N400 million in tertiary bursaries, that is Philippians 2:4 in administrative form, a senator looking past his own interests to the interests of young people he will likely never meet, in households he will never visit, whose only relationship with him is the alert that arrives in their account.
When 150 solar-powered boreholes are constructed and rehabilitated across communities that had stopped expecting clean water, that is the same scripture, expressed in concrete and steel. When over a thousand women are trained and empowered in cooperative groups across the federal constituencies of Kogi West, the work is not a campaign tactic. It is the practical shape of a verse lived out.
When a federal road abandoned for more than a decade, the Kabba–Mopa–Isanlu–Egbe–Ilorin corridor, is brought back to life through N9 billion in budgetary engagement and contractor CGC returns to site, what the eye sees is asphalt. What faith sees is a senator refusing to let a community remain forgotten.
A Legacy That Outlasts the Office
Hebrews 6:10 carries a particular consolation for those whose work in public life is unseen, unappreciated, or actively resisted. The verse insists that God himself remembers, that no labour of love offered to his people falls into the void of human forgetfulness. It is the kind of scripture that sustains a public servant on the days when the political weather is against him.
Senator Sunday Karimi has invoked this verse not as a defence but as a foundation. It speaks of a man who has decided, before God, that the work will continue regardless of who applauds and who does not. That is the disposition of a steward, not a politician.
And it speaks of legacy — “a lasting legacy that my children and society will be proud of.” In Nigerian public life, where the children of leaders too often inherit grievance rather than honour, the senator’s framing is almost counter-cultural. He is building, by his own account, not a political brand but a name his children can carry without apology.
The Christ Who Strengthens
The closing line of the senator’s reflection is the hinge on which the entire confession turns. “This endeavour of adding value to humanity will persist through the Christ that strengthens me.”
It is a direct echo of Philippians 4:13 — “I can do all things through Christ which strengthens me” — and it places the senator’s work within a tradition of Christian public service that runs from William Wilberforce to Obafemi Awolowo, men who understood that statecraft, properly conceived, is a form of ministry. The works are public. The strength is borrowed. The credit, in the final analysis, belongs elsewhere.
For the believing constituent in Kogi West, this is not abstract theology. It is the assurance that the bursary credited to a son’s account, the borehole pumping in a village square, the asphalt returning to a long-abandoned road, all of these are the visible fruit of an invisible commitment. The senator has named the source of his strength, and the source explains the consistency of his output.
The Quiet Power of a Named Conviction
In a political culture that often treats faith as decoration, Senator Karimi’s reflection treats it as foundation. He has not asked to be admired for his work. He has located his work in something larger than himself, and trusted that larger thing to vindicate it in due time.
The Sunday Christian in Okunland will recognise the cadence. The pastor in Lokoja will recognise the verses. The grandmother in Egbe who has watched politics for sixty years will recognise the rarity of a senator who speaks like this without performing.
And perhaps that is the deepest answer to the question with which we began.
Why does Senator Sunday Steve Karimi serve?
Because he believes, in his own words, and by his own confession, that the work is not finally his. It is the Christ who strengthens him. And the legacy he is building is not for himself, but for the children, and the society, and the God who, the scripture promises, will not forget.
That is a foundation. And foundations of that depth tend to outlast every season.
– Adams Yusuf writes from Lokoja.
