By joshua Karimi And The Kogi West Verdict: When Performance Speaks Louder Than Politics
By Oshio Baba
In Kogi West, politics has a simple test that no amount of propaganda can rig. The people ask a quiet question in their compounds, markets and farms – has your life become a little better than it was yesterday? It is on that test, not on social media noise, that reputations rise or fall.
Senator Sunday Steve Karimi understood this early, and it explains why orchestrated distractions have not taken root in the district.
To those who have followed Kogi West closely since 1999, Karimi stands out as a rare blend of experience, composure and uncommon generosity. A trained engineer, a successful businessman of proven integrity, a two-term House of Representatives member whose tenure remains a reference point for effective legislation, and now a ranking Senator and Chairman of Senate Services in the 10th National Assembly, he carries a depth that his contemporaries in the contest simply do not possess. He is calm but firm, wealthy yet accessible, strategic yet deeply humane, a leader whose wealth of network, legislative gravitas and personal discipline has given Kogi West a louder voice in Abuja than at any time in recent history.
The most discerning political watchers in Lokoja, Kabba, Yagba and Kogi LGAs describe him as the most prepared, the most connected and the most tested man in the Kogi West Senate race. While others seek office for relevance, Karimi seeks continuity to consolidate. While others campaign with slogans, he campaigns with sites, schools and service records.
His approach has been deliberate and unshowy. Rather than loud promises, he has returned to the basics of what constituents need to feel government. Roads that were abandoned for more than a decade are now breathing again. The Kabba-Egbe-Ilorin corridor, a lifeline for farmers and traders across Yagba, Mopamuro and Kabba-Bunu, is back under active construction after years of silence, with heavy equipment now visible along the Isanlu-Ejiba stretch. The collapsed Pakuta link that connects Aiyegunle-Gbede to Kiri and Kupa communities in Kogi Local Government, which cut off thousands from markets and schools, has also received urgent intervention through his personal funding.
In education, the imprint is equally practical and unprecedented. At Titcombe College, Egbe, his alma mater, a modern 288-seater, solar-powered computer-based test centre now sits where candidates once travelled hours to write national examinations, a N350 million intervention that hosted over 1,200 JAMB candidates in 2026. That visionary effort is being replicated in Muslim Community Secondary School, Lokongoma in Lokoja, Government Science School, Iyara, Okutadudu Comprehensive College, Odo-Ere and ECWA Secondary School, Mopa. The full remodelling of Government Science Secondary School, Koton-Karfe, with new classrooms, laboratories and facilities at over N1.2 billion, remains the single biggest school infrastructure ever attracted to Kogi West by a sitting Senator.
Water, light and security, the three daily struggles of rural families, have been treated as priorities rather than afterthoughts. Communities that waited years for a drop of clean water now have solar-powered boreholes, with over 150 new ones sunk and 60 moribund schemes revived. Settlements that lived in darkness have received more than 32 transformers and over 500 solar streetlights across 62 communities. Along the vulnerable Kogi-Kwara border, the establishment of a 94-bed, fully furnished military Forward Operating Base in Egbe at over N750 million of personal resources, commissioned by the Chief of Army Staff, has restored calm to an axis once dreaded by travellers and students.
Beyond structures, there is the human ledger that no opponent can match. More than 3,000 indigent students have received N300 million bursary tranches, with total disbursement crossing N700 million in two years, the largest student support programme ever by any Senator from the district. Women cooperatives have been strengthened with N100 million revolving capital, over 500 traders in Lokoja supported with business grants, and more than 34 youths secured pensionable appointments in federal and paramilitary services.
What has held this together is accessibility and character. Karimi has remained within reach of ward leaders, traditional rulers, women groups and youth associations. He listens, returns calls, shows up. He does not abandon his people after elections. He does not divide along clan lines.
In the contest for Kogi West Senate, analysts agree that Karimi is not just a candidate, he is the benchmark. The most experienced, the most impactful, the most accepted across all seven local government areas, the only one with both legislative pedigree and verifiable constituency footprints. He represents purposeful representation, sustainable development and grassroots connection, a combination his rivals struggle to assemble.
That is why the grassroots remain unmoved by manufactured narratives. They have learned to separate empty political noise from purposeful work that touches lives.
When impact is visible in boreholes that flow, classrooms that work, roads that reopen and families that feel safer, people need little convincing. Performance, in the end, speaks in a language everyone understands, and in Kogi West today, that language bears one name – Sunday Steve Karimi.