By Emmanuel Nnadozie Onwubiko<\/p>\n
When Senator Osita Bonaventure Izunaso returned to the National Assembly in 2023, more than three years ago, he came back to a Senate very different from the one he had previously known.
\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/motion_photo_2033512345008654844.jpg\")
\nNigeria was confronting a worsening cost-of-living crisis. The naira was under pressure, and the foreign-exchange market was unsettled. Infrastructure deficits remained widespread, while the South-East was still struggling with insecurity, the sit-at-home order and the economic consequences of prolonged political tension.<\/p>\n
For Izunaso, the challenge was particularly complicated.<\/p>\n
He was not simply another senator in Abuja. He represented Imo West, a constituency spread across 12 local government areas and embedded in one of the country\u2019s most politically restive regions.<\/p>\n
Two years into the 10th National Assembly, his record has consequently developed along three parallel tracks: legislation and oversight in Abuja, constituency interventions in Imo West, and advocacy on issues that have come to define the political conversation in the South-East.<\/p>\n
That combination provides a more revealing picture of his time in the Senate than a simple catalogue of projects.<\/p>\n
Capital-market reform and legislative responsibility<\/p>\n
One of the first tests of Izunaso\u2019s second Senate career came not from his constituency but from Nigeria\u2019s financial markets.<\/p>\n
In August 2023, he became chairman of the Senate Committee on Capital Market and Institutions.<\/p>\n
It was a consequential assignment.<\/p>\n
The capital market is where government policy, private investment, pension funds, companies and individual investors meet. At a time when Nigeria was trying to attract investment while battling currency instability and declining purchasing power, the committee\u2019s responsibilities extended beyond technical regulation.<\/p>\n
Izunaso\u2019s committee became involved in the legislative process that produced the Investments and Securities Bill 2024.<\/p>\n
The bill sought to replace the 2007 legislation and update the legal framework governing Nigeria\u2019s capital market. It addressed issues including investor protection, market regulation, market abuse and the powers of the Securities and Exchange Commission.<\/p>\n
Izunaso was identified as the main sponsor of the legislation and played a prominent role in its consideration by the Senate.<\/p>\n
The bill eventually passed the Senate in December 2024.<\/p>\n
That episode says something important about the senator\u2019s present role. His influence in the National Assembly is not confined to bills bearing his name. Committee chairmanship gives a lawmaker considerable influence over what comes before the chamber, how legislation is scrutinised and how regulatory institutions are subjected to oversight.<\/p>\n
It is an influence that is less visible than the commissioning of a road or the distribution of empowerment equipment, but potentially broader in its consequences.<\/p>\n
When the naira became a Senate issue<\/p>\n
Izunaso also turned his attention to the foreign-exchange crisis.<\/p>\n
He sponsored a motion calling for an investigation into the accumulation of foreign-exchange backlogs, activities in the forex market and the Central Bank of Nigeria\u2019s development-finance programmes dating back to 2015.<\/p>\n
The motion came at a time when businesses and households were feeling the effects of exchange-rate volatility.<\/p>\n
For a senator representing a district where trading, manufacturing and small businesses are important components of local economic life, the issue had both national and constituency dimensions.<\/p>\n
His intervention reflected an emerging feature of his Senate work: taking issues that appear to belong to Abuja and connecting them to the economic realities of people back home.<\/p>\n
Besides, Senator Izunaso was the sole representative of Nigeria at the Money\/202\/20 Middle East which took place from September 14-16, 2026 at the Riyadh Exhibition and Convention centre in Malham, Saudi Arabia. The event was hosted by the Financial Sector Development Programme (FSDP), Saudi Central Bank (SANA), Capital Market Authority (IA); co-organized by Tahaluf and Fintech Saudi. Money20\/20 Middle East brings together banks, Fintech companies, investors regulators, technology providers and policy makers to explore the future of payments, banking, financial infrastructure and digital finance. <\/p>\n
But Abuja is only half the story<\/p>\n
For most constituents, however, parliamentary committee work can seem remote.<\/p>\n
The test of representation is often much more immediate: the road that connects one community to another, the electricity project, the student who receives a scholarship, the young person who receives equipment to start a business, or the patient who receives treatment during a medical outreach.<\/p>\n
This is where Izunaso\u2019s constituency programme has attracted the greatest attention from his supporters.<\/p>\n
His office lists road rehabilitation, electricity, water, healthcare, education, agriculture and youth empowerment among the interventions undertaken in Imo West.<\/p>\n
It also reports skills-acquisition programmes in communities including Akokwa and Urualla.<\/p>\n
The senator\u2019s empowerment programmes have distributed equipment such as sewing machines, grinding machines, welding tools, barbing kits and other items intended to help beneficiaries establish businesses.<\/p>\n
Motorcycles and vehicles have also been included among the items distributed.<\/p>\n
The political photographs from such events are easy to find. The harder question is what happens after the cameras leave.<\/p>\n
Does the sewing machine become a viable tailoring business? Does the welding equipment create employment? Does the motorcycle become a source of sustainable income?<\/p>\n
Those are the questions that ultimately determine whether an empowerment programme becomes a development intervention or simply another political ceremony.<\/p>\n
Izunaso\u2019s published record presents the programmes as part of an effort to promote self-reliance.<\/p>\n
Education and human-capital development<\/p>\n
Education has provided another important strand of the senator\u2019s constituency work.<\/p>\n
At his July 2024 town-hall meeting, Izunaso presented a first-year scorecard and highlighted scholarship programmes, youth training, healthcare and infrastructure interventions.<\/p>\n
The senator reported that 200 students had benefited from scholarships.<\/p>\n
His supporters have also pointed to interventions through the Kpakpando Education Foundation, including educational assistance and support for schools.<\/p>\n
For families confronting the rising cost of education, such interventions can be significant.<\/p>\n
But, again, the larger measure of success is not the announcement of a scholarship. It is whether the beneficiary completes school, acquires useful skills and eventually enters productive employment.<\/p>\n
That is the difference between measuring activity and measuring impact.<\/p>\n
Representation in a troubled region<\/p>\n
Perhaps the most politically consequential aspect of Izunaso\u2019s Senate career has nothing to do with roads or scholarships.<\/p>\n
It is his position on the South-East\u2019s political crisis.<\/p>\n
Soon after his return to the Senate, Izunaso sought a political solution to the continued detention of Nnamdi Kanu, the leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra.<\/p>\n
His intervention was controversial because Kanu\u2019s case sits at the intersection of separatist agitation, national security, criminal justice and the long-running political grievances of the South-East.<\/p>\n
Izunaso argued that a political approach could help create conditions for peace and address the economic damage associated with the sit-at-home order.<\/p>\n
The Senate did not adopt his proposal for Kanu\u2019s release.<\/p>\n
But the senator continued to raise the issue.<\/p>\n
His argument has essentially been that military and security responses alone cannot resolve a problem with deep political roots.<\/p>\n
That position places him in a delicate political space. He is a member of the governing APC, yet he has advocated an approach to one of the South-East\u2019s most contentious issues that has not always aligned with the harder security position of the Federal Government.<\/p>\n
For constituents in Imo West, however, the issue is not theoretical.<\/p>\n
The sit-at-home order has affected transport, commerce, schools and daily economic activity across the region. Any political or security intervention capable of restoring normal economic life therefore has direct consequences for the people Izunaso represents.<\/p>\n
The Anim State question<\/p>\n
Izunaso has also chosen to put his political weight behind the demand for another state in the South-East.<\/p>\n
He has promoted the proposed Anim State, arguing that the creation of an additional state could improve political representation and development in the region.<\/p>\n
The proposal has particular relevance to his political base because it involves areas around Imo West and neighbouring Anambra.<\/p>\n
But state creation is one of the most difficult constitutional exercises in Nigeria.<\/p>\n
It requires more than political enthusiasm. It requires the fulfilment of constitutional procedures and demonstrable support among affected communities.<\/p>\n
Izunaso has nevertheless continued to push the proposal, making it part of his broader argument that the South-East requires greater political and developmental balance.<\/p>\n
His support for the South-East Development Commission follows the same regional-development logic.<\/p>\n
Together, the two issues show that his Senate agenda has increasingly moved beyond the boundaries of Imo West.<\/p>\n
From intervention to impact<\/p>\n
There is another way to look at Izunaso\u2019s constituency interventions.<\/p>\n
They represent an attempt to translate the abstract language of government policy into individual economic opportunities.<\/p>\n
A road is infrastructure.<\/p>\n
A scholarship is human capital.<\/p>\n
A skills-acquisition programme is an employment intervention.<\/p>\n
A medical outreach is social protection.<\/p>\n
An empowerment tool is an attempt at livelihood creation.<\/p>\n
That is the theory behind the model.<\/p>\n
Whether the model works at scale is a separate question.<\/p>\n
Izunaso\u2019s official project platform reports interventions across all 12 local government areas of Imo West, while his supporters have cited hundreds of beneficiaries from empowerment programmes and thousands of persons living with disabilities who have received assistance.<\/p>\n
Those figures are claims from his office and supporters and should be independently tested against project records, beneficiary accounts and evidence of completion.<\/p>\n
That scrutiny is not a rejection of the interventions. It is precisely what political accountability requires.<\/p>\n
Measuring legislative performance<\/p>\n
There is a tendency in Nigerian politics to reduce legislative performance to numbers: how many bills were sponsored, how many motions were moved and how many projects were facilitated.<\/p>\n
The numbers matter, but they do not tell the whole story.<\/p>\n
A senator\u2019s job involves legislation, representation, oversight and advocacy.<\/p>\n
Izunaso\u2019s first years in the 10th Assembly illustrate all four.<\/p>\n
He has participated in financial-sector legislation as chairman of the Capital Market and Institutions Committee. He has raised questions about foreign-exchange management. He has sponsored legislative proposals dealing with infrastructure and fire prevention.<\/p>\n
At home, his office has pursued education, healthcare, empowerment and infrastructure interventions.<\/p>\n
And on the regional stage, he has continued to speak about Nnamdi Kanu, insecurity, state creation and the South-East Development Commission.<\/p>\n
The record is therefore neither simply an Abuja story nor simply an Imo West story.<\/p>\n
It is a story about a politician trying to operate in both worlds simultaneously.<\/p>\n
The unfinished test<\/p>\n
There is, however, a larger test ahead.<\/p>\n
The 10th National Assembly still has time to determine the final shape of Izunaso\u2019s legislative record.<\/p>\n
Some bills associated with him and his committee have become law or advanced through the legislative process. Others remain proposals.<\/p>\n
Some constituency interventions have been completed, while others require continuing assessment.<\/p>\n
And some of the biggest issues he has championed\u2014particularly state creation and the political resolution of the South-East crisis\u2014remain far from settled.<\/p>\n
That makes his first two years a chapter rather than a conclusion.<\/p>\n
The senator has established the themes of his current representation: capital-market reform in Abuja, development interventions in Imo West and political advocacy for the South-East.<\/p>\n
The more difficult part is converting those activities into durable outcomes.<\/p>\n
For a lawmaker, that is ultimately where the difference between activity and impact lies.<\/p>\n
A bill becomes meaningful when it changes the law and improves regulation.<\/p>\n
A road becomes meaningful when it remains usable.<\/p>\n
A scholarship becomes meaningful when it helps a student complete an education.<\/p>\n
An empowerment programme becomes meaningful when the business survives.<\/p>\n
And political advocacy becomes meaningful when it produces measurable change in the lives of the people affected.<\/p>\n
That is the unfinished test of Osita Izunaso\u2019s second journey through the National Assembly.<\/p>\n
So far, his Senate career has been defined by an effort to occupy all three spaces available to a modern Nigerian lawmaker: the legislative floor in Abuja, the constituency at home and the wider political arena of the South-East.<\/p>\n
What remains is for time and evidence to determine how deeply that effort has changed each of them.<\/p>\n
EMMANUEL NNADOZIE ONWUBIKO is the founder of the Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria and a former National Commissioner of the National Human Rights Commission of Nigeria.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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