By Oshio Baba
There is a difference between winning an election and winning the trust of a people, and Senator Sunday Steve Karimi has done both. That is why his victory in the APC primary for Kogi West on May 18, 2026, with 51,665 votes, surprised no one who has watched the district in the last three years. It was not manufactured in Abuja. It was harvested from the farms, markets, classrooms, boreholes, bridges and town halls of seven local governments. A second term for Karimi is not a favour to a man. It is an investment in a district that has finally found a voice that delivers.
Karimi, a two-term former member of the House of Representatives, the first man from Yagba to reach the Senate since 1999, an engineer by training and Chairman of the Senate Committee on Services, has turned access into influence and influence into visible projects across Lokoja, Kogi, Kabba-Bunu, Ijumu, Yagba East, Yagba West and Mopa-Muro. His first term has become the benchmark for representation in Kogi West, because he raised the bar from noise to proof.
The proof is in education. Through his own resources, via the Sunday Steve Karimi Education Foundation and the Tinubu Support Group, he committed N100 million to 1,000 students in 2024, N300 million to 3,000 students across Kogi in 2025, and another N300 million in August 2026, a total of N700 million for over 4,000 students in three years. Beyond bursaries, he rebuilt Government Science Secondary School, Koton-Karfe, at over N1.2 billion, transformed the old library at Titcombe College, Egbe, into a modern 288-seater solar-powered CBT centre at over N350 million that hosted over 1,200 JAMB candidates, and secured three more 275-capacity CBT centres in the 2026 budget for Lokoja, Iyara and Odo-Ere, with a fourth at ECWA Secondary School, Mopa, funded personally by him.
It is in infrastructure too. He facilitated N2 billion for the abandoned Kabba-Egbe road and secured another N6 billion from the Minister of Works to return the contractor to site after eleven years. He captured N3 billion in the 2025 budget for the Iluhagba-Mopa-Isanlu-Egbe road, funded the reconstruction of the collapsed Pakuta Bridge, intervened in erosion and drainage projects in Ilafin and Ejuku, and delivered over 85 solar-powered boreholes, more than 140 rehabilitated boreholes, transformers and solar streetlights in over 500 communities.
It is in security and empowerment. When kidnappers turned the Kogi-Kwara border into a corridor of fear, he spent N750 million of his own resources to build, furnish and equip a 94-bed military Forward Operating Base in Egbe, donated two Hilux patrol vans, and facilitated troop deployment to Jege, Odo-Ere, Isanlu and Olle-Bunu, an intervention commissioned by the Chief of Army Staff in October 2024. He also supported over 500 traders in Lokoja, gave 50 women cooperatives access to N100 million, boosted nursing education with N11 million, secured over 34 pensionable federal appointments, and completed a cottage hospital in Edu-Kakanda. In the Senate, he has sponsored 15 bills, including the CBN Act Amendment Bill 2023, and moved the motion that triggered scrutiny of N11.35 trillion reportedly spent on refinery maintenance.
But it is his loyalty to President Bola Ahmed Tinubu that defines him most. Karimi is a thorough disciple of the President, who has openly committed Kogi West to Tinubu’s second term and kept the Renewed Hope Agenda alive in every ward since 2023. Loyalty, he understands, is proved not by slogans but by results, and the INEC results of 2023 are the evidence the APC cannot ignore.
In 2023, Tinubu won Kogi with 240,751 votes against Atiku Abubakar’s 145,104 and Peter Obi’s 56,217, winning 15 of 21 local governments. In Kogi West, he won all seven: Lokoja, Kogi, Kabba-Bunu, Ijumu, Yagba East, Yagba West and Mopa-Muro, a clean sweep no other zone achieved. Kogi East gave him six of nine. Kogi Central, despite controlling Government House, with a governor from that zone and the full weight of state power behind him, gave him only two of five, losing Adavi, Okehi and Ogori-Magongo, and later losing its Senate seat to the opposition. Kogi has now had two APC governors in a row from Kogi Central, yet that zone’s Senate seat is held by the PDP. Meanwhile, Kogi West sent an APC Senator to Abuja and gave Asiwaju a clean sweep, on the same day, from the same voters. Karimi and Tinubu won Kogi West side by side.
So the question for 2027 answers itself. If you want Kogi for the President, you protect the zone that gave him a clean sweep, and within that zone, you protect the leader who has kept his campaign alive. Yet the fight against Karimi is being led by those whose zone gave the President his weakest result, some of whom stood against Asiwaju in the 2022 APC presidential primary, who could not deliver their own backyard in 2023 and still cannot win back their own Senate seat, but now want to decide who carries his flag in Kogi West. That is not strategy. It is sabotage dressed as loyalty. Those who failed the test in their own backyard cannot grade Kogi West.
This is why the judgment of November 4, 2026, in Suit No. FHC/LKJ/CS/63/2026, which nullified Karimi’s nomination and ordered the APC to submit the name of Hon. Samuel Bamidele Aro and directed INEC to publish him, shocked Kogi West. How, the people ask, could a man who, on Karimi’s camp’s record, exited the race in writing before it was held and joined stakeholders in Kabba on May 17, 2026, to endorse Karimi as consensus candidate, be declared winner of an election he did not contest, against the submission of the APC and the position of INEC? Karimi has rejected the judgment and gone to the Court of Appeal, and five questions now stand out.
First, was the suit filed in time? Section 285(9) gives only 14 days. On Karimi’s reckoning, his particulars reached INEC on June 29, so the window closed around July 13, while Aro filed on July 23, ten days late. The trial court held differently, that the cause arose on July 11 when his Form EC9 was uploaded, making the filing timely. The Appeal Court must resolve this conflict of dates, because time is the gatekeeper of pre-election justice.
Second, whose party is it? The APC conducted the primary, its National Working Committee forwarded Karimi’s name to INEC and defended that nomination in court. The Electoral Act gives the party the duty to conduct its primary and INEC the duty to monitor it. Can a monitoring record overturn the party’s own choice?
Third, can INEC’s missing paperwork defeat a candidate? Karimi wrote to INEC on June 15 asking for certified copies of the results. They were not issued. That gap sits in INEC’s files, not in his conduct. The trial court held that his primary was not monitored by INEC and was therefore invalid, and that INEC had no record of his results. The Appeal Court must say whether a candidate can lose his nomination because the commission did not produce documents he asked for.
Fourth, were Aro’s documents properly tested? The defence said his results included figures from the presidential election, that some listed agents belonged to the House of Representatives primary, and that he announced his withdrawal on social media before the vote. The trial court, relying on the INEC Monitoring Report and the APC Primary Election Committee Report, rejected the Appeal Committee Report that recommended Karimi, and found Aro won with 49,734 votes against Karimi’s 937, findings Karimi’s camp vigorously disputes. Claims of this weight deserve full examination on appeal.
Fifth, the remedy. The court ordered the APC to submit Aro’s name and INEC to publish him. Orders this wide stand only if every finding beneath them is right. If the limitation point succeeds, or the party’s records prevail, the whole structure falls.
Karimi remains the man the APC chose and the NWC forwarded to INEC, the man who has worked across all seven local governments and openly committed Kogi West to Tinubu’s second term. He has taken the lawful path. His supporters should remain calm, peaceful and keep working, because the appeal is the next chapter, not the last one. The APC and President Tinubu must not watch as a worthy disciple is sidelined on the altar of self-interest against the wish of the generality of Kogi West people. Kogi needs all three zones in 2027. Kogi Central must improve, and Kogi East must hold, but Kogi West has already shown the way. Do not break what is working. Do not hand the President’s safest zone in Kogi to a camp with the weakest record. Protect the zone that delivers. Keep Senator Karimi in the field. For Kogi West gave Tinubu all seven local governments in 2023. Who else can say that?
– Oshio Baba writes form Lokoja.
