This photograph tells a story that no press statement can fully capture.
In this image stand Sen Isah Jibrin Echocho, Chief Edward David Onoja, David Zakariya and several other distinguished sons of Kogi East. Men who have spent decades building the political structures, the grassroots networks, the community relationships, and the electoral machinery that has delivered Kogi East’s votes in election after election. They are not strangers to sacrifice for the All Progressives Congress APC. They are the political family of a senatorial district that has given this party its most reliable electoral performances across multiple election cycles.
Today they stand together not in celebration. But in the quiet dignity of men who have been displaced by an imposition they did not deserve, did not invite, and did not consent to.
Yahaya Bello has replaced Senator Jibrin Isah Echocho with his handpicked candidate in Kogi East. He has replaced David Zakariya and other House of Representatives candidates across Kogi East with imposed figures whose primary qualification is loyalty to a former governor facing Economic and Financial Crimes Commission charges exceeding 110 billion Naira, not loyalty to the Igala people they are being positioned to represent.
And beyond this photograph, His Excellency Yakubu Murtala Ajaka, whose SDP governorship performance in 2024 proved beyond argument that his political strength in Kogi East is organic, documented, and electorally verified, was equally targeted by the same imposition machinery. It took the personal intervention of APC’s national leadership to bring him back into the fold, not because he needed the party, but because the party could not afford to leave his grassroots strength outside its tent. Even then, the same machinery that displaced Echocho, Zakariya, and others continued working to marginalise his influence within Kogi East’s political architecture.
The human cost of that imposition is in this photograph. Men of standing. Men of grassroots reach. Men whose names are known in every ward, every market, and every community meeting across nine local governments. Displaced not by democratic process. Not by the will of the people. But by the political calculations of one man from one local government who does not vote in Kogi East and whose interests in controlling it have nothing to do with its development.
Now hear the warning that Yahaya Bello must receive with absolute clarity.
Senator Jibrin Isah Echocho has represented Kogi East in the Senate for nearly eight years. Chief Edward David Onoja served as Deputy Governor of Kogi State. David Zakariya commands deep roots across his federal constituency. His Excellency Murtala Yakubu Ajaka took a governorship contest to the Supreme Court and emerged with a political credibility that no imposition can manufacture. Together with their colleagues in this photograph, they represent the actual grassroots electoral infrastructure that has delivered Kogi East’s votes in every election that mattered.
Yahaya Bello does not deliver Kogi East votes. These men do. Their networks do. Their ward structures do. Their community relationships do. Their names on ballot papers do.
No imposed candidate, however well funded and however loyally connected to Abuja power brokers, can replicate in six months what these men have built across decades of genuine constituency service. The 2027 general elections will not be won in hotel rooms or through NWC lobby delegations. They will be won ward by ward, polling unit by polling unit, across nine Igala local governments by candidates whose names the people recognise, trust, and have chosen to support.
You have also attempted the same imposition against Distinguished Senator Sunday Steve Karimi DSSK in Kogi West. That attempt has been forensically documented, institutionally defeated, and permanently placed on the public record. The NWC has signed. The National Chairman has spoken. The President has affirmed.
In Kogi East you have wounded your own. In Kogi West you have failed to wound their performing Senator.
And in Nigerian electoral politics, the men you displace on your way to power are the same men whose absence defines your defeat on election day.
2027 is coming. The votes of Kogi East belong to its people. The mandate of Kogi West belongs to Senator Sunday Karimi.
Neither belongs to Okene.
Signed:
Adams Yusuf
National Publicity Secretary
Kogi Equity Alliance
