Reported by: Ijeoma G | Edited by: Oravbiere Osayomore Promise.
Fresh tension has erupted within the Kogi West chapter of the All Progressives Congress (APC) following allegations that a fake result sheet has been manufactured to overturn Senator Sunday Karimi’s landslide victory in the party’s senatorial primary. According to multiple reports and official documents seen by Stone Reporters News, Senator Karimi was declared the winner of the primary held on May 18, 2026, after polling 51,665 votes, defeating four other aspirants, including Samuel Bamidele Aro, who scored only 620 votes, and former Senator Smart Adeyemi, who polled 571 votes. However, a separate result sheet, which party stakeholders allege to be forged, has surfaced naming Aro as the winner, plunging the district into a deepening crisis and sparking fears of a systematic attempt to subvert the mandate of party members.
The official result, announced by the APC Kogi West Senatorial District Returning Officer, Alhaji Haruna Isah, and submitted to the party’s state primary election committee, showed a decisive margin in favour of the incumbent senator. The full breakdown of the authentic result is as follows: Senator Sunday Karimi Steve – 51,665 votes; Samuel Aro – 620 votes; Smart Adeyemi – 571 votes; Alhaji Abubakar Zakari Ola – 414 votes; and Elizabeth Adedoyin – 18 votes. The margin of over 51,000 votes was seen as a resounding endorsement of Karimi’s performance and grassroots appeal, particularly given that Aro, Adeyemi and other aspirants had publicly withdrawn from the race before the primary was conducted.
Barely 48 hours after the official declaration, a contradictory result sheet began circulating on social media and within party circles, purporting to name Samuel Aro as the winner of the same primary. Party stakeholders have since alleged that this alternate result sheet is a forgery, and that members of the Lawal Sama’ila Abdullahi electoral primary committee forged the signature of the returning officer, Haruna Isah, in order to replace the original certified results with a fake version favourable to Aro. A source privy to the inner circle alleged that money changed hands to get the deal done in favour of Aro, though this has not been independently confirmed.
“On the 18th of May, 2026, the All Progressives Congress (APC) conducted its Senatorial Primary Election nationwide. Senator Sunday Karimi was publicly declared winner of the primary after polling 51,665 votes, according to the official result announced by the APC Kogi West Senatorial District Returning Officer, Haruna Isah. The returning officer said Karimi defeated four other aspirants and submitted the certified result to the APC Kogi State Senatorial Primary Election Committee headed by Lawal Sama’ila Abdullahi. Stakeholders of the party in Kogi West alleged that a separate result sheet with different figures surfaced afterward, with a forged signature of the returning officer. They said the move was exposed before it could be processed further by the National Headquarters of the party.”
In response to the unfolding forgery scandal, Kogi West APC stakeholders have made an urgent appeal to President Bola Ahmed Tinubu and the party’s national leadership to intervene immediately. They are demanding that those found liable for the alleged forgery and result tampering be arrested and prosecuted, and that the authentic result announced by the returning officer be upheld as the only legitimate outcome of the primary. One stakeholder, speaking on condition of anonymity, expressed outrage at the plot. "The margin was clear and decisive. Any attempt to replace that with a forged document is an assault on party members who came out to vote across the 85 wards of the senatorial district."
The controversy is the latest and most serious episode in a long‑running power struggle over the APC ticket in Kogi West. Months before the primary, a faction of party leaders, reportedly backed by some government appointees and aligned with Governor Usman Ododo’s administration, had attempted to impose Samuel Aro as a consensus candidate, bypassing Senator Karimi. On May 11, 2026, a meeting held at the residence of a senior government official in Lokoja reportedly endorsed Aro as the preferred candidate, a move that was immediately rejected by the Karimi 2.0 Group and by the Kogi West Elders Assembly (KWEA), who accused the meeting’s organisers of attempting to undermine internal democracy and disenfranchise the people of Kogi West.
The Kogi West Elders Assembly, in a statement signed by prominent leaders from the three federal constituencies of the district, warned that attempts to manipulate the party’s senatorial primary ahead of the 2027 elections could have serious consequences for the ruling party. The group expressed displeasure over the Lokoja meeting, alleging that it was aimed at undermining the incumbent senator, whom they described as hardworking, accessible and widely accepted across the district. According to the elders, the relationship between Senator Karimi and the state government became strained after the senator publicly advocated for a power shift to Kogi West ahead of the 2027 governorship contest, noting that Kogi West would mark 35 years of political exclusion from the governorship position by August 27, 2026.
The crisis deepened further when a separate group, calling itself the Pro‑Tinubu Stakeholders Forum, raised an alarm that the push for Aro was part of a “spoiler plot” by opposition elements in collusion with influential figures within the Kogi State Government. In a statement, the group alleged that the ultimate goal was to secure the APC ticket for Aro under false pretences, only for him to defect or work against the party’s presidential candidate in the general election. The forum described Aro as a known protégé of Chief Tunde Ayeni, a businessman and prominent financier of the opposition African Democratic Congress (ADC), and claimed that installing Aro would split the pro‑Tinubu vote in Kogi West, thereby weakening the ruling party’s strength in a district that voted overwhelmingly for the president in 2023.
Despite the rising tensions, the situation appeared to have been temporarily defused when President Tinubu personally intervened. According to party sources, the president expressed his backing for Senator Karimi to continue as the party’s candidate, and following that intervention, Samuel Aro publicly announced his withdrawal from the senatorial race. The APC went ahead to conduct its primary election, which produced the result that now stands. However, the emergence of the allegedly forged result sheet has reopened old wounds and raised fears that some individuals are determined to overturn the will of party members, even after the president’s intervention.
Meanwhile, the stakes in Kogi West have been further heightened by the controversy surrounding former Kogi State Governor Yahaya Bello, who is the godfather of Governor Usman Ododo and is currently facing a corruption trial instituted by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission. Political analysts note that the tensions in Kogi West are not isolated but are interwoven with the broader power struggles within the Kogi APC, including the rivalry between the camps of former Governor Yahaya Bello and President Tinubu. It is alleged that the plot to impose Aro is connected to a wider scheme to destabilise the party in Kogi State and weaken the president’s re‑election campaign in the state.
As the controversy continues to unfold, supporters of Senator Karimi have vowed to resist any attempt to replace him with a candidate who was decisively rejected at the polls. Across the seven local government areas of Kogi West, party members are watching closely to see whether the party’s national leadership will uphold the principles of internal democracy and protect the integrity of the primary process. The coming days are expected to be decisive, as the APC National Working Committee prepares to review the conduct of the primaries nationwide. For the people of Kogi West, the message is clear: the margin of Senator Karimi’s victory was too large to be erased by a forged signature.
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