Nigeria styles itself a multiparty democracy. Yet, in substance, it is anything but. The recent flurry of defections between political parties, often lauded as signs of a vibrant democracy, reveals a more hurting truth: Nigerian politics is devoid of ideological differentiation. The parties are indistinguishable vessels for elite competition. In effect, the country operates as a one-party state in all but name.
Abdullahi Ganduje, National Chairman of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), recently echoed what many within the political establishment have long believed but rarely admit. Advocating for a one-party system, he pointed to China’s economic performance as justification and lamented the inefficiencies of multi-party governance. Far from a gaffe, Ganduje’s remarks align with the prevailing logic of Nigeria’s political class: that the goal is consolidation of power, not competition of ideas.
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President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, himself a chief architect of the APC’s creation in 2014, famously invoked Lord Palmerston’s dictum that “there are no permanent friends or enemies, only permanent interests.” The phrase, once a realist formulation of international relations, has become the organising principle of Nigerian political life. In this calculus, ideology is a luxury; loyalty is transactional.
This absence of ideological conviction renders the party switching both routine and unremarkable. In developed democracies, such as the UK or the US, party affiliation is shaped by long-standing policy convictions: Labour versus Conservative, Democrat versus Republican, anchored in coherent philosophical traditions. Defections, where they occur, tend to follow deep policy disagreements or seismic shifts in leadership direction.
In Nigeria, however, political loyalty is rarely tethered to policy or principle. The proliferation of parties, over 70 in 2019, reduced to 18 by 2023, has not produced meaningful plurality. Instead, it has spawned a crowded field of indistinct platforms, often revolving around prominent individuals rather than programme-based agendas. Politicians flit between parties with little regard for consistency, seeking advantage rather than advancing ideology.
“Defections, where they occur, tend to follow deep policy disagreements or seismic shifts in leadership direction.”
The implications are corrosive. As Will Hutton observed in The State We’re In, democracy depends on political parties offering “distinctive policies that correspond to some coherent political vision.” Without this, he warned, debate becomes a charade. That description resonates disturbingly with Nigeria’s current political landscape.
The country once boasted a history of ideologically anchored politics. During the First Republic, parties like the Action Group (AG) and the Northern Elements Progressive Union (NEPU) offered competing visions for development. Even in the Second Republic, ideological traces remained in parties such as the Unity Party of Nigeria (UPN) and the People’s Redemption Party (PRP). But the slow erosion of these distinctions began with General Babangida’s military transition programme, which imposed the National Republican Convention (NRC) and the Social Democratic Party (SDP) without organic roots. The stated aim was to craft a binary ideological spectrum, “a little to the left” and “a little to the right” but in practice, politicians gravitated to whichever side offered better odds at the polls.
Since the dawn of the Fourth Republic in 1999, this pattern has persisted. The People’s Democratic Party (PDP), once dominant, was a big tent encompassing a mosaic of political tradition, retired generals, business magnates, and self-described progressives. The APC emerged not as a counter-ideological force but as a coalition of expediency, drawing heavily from PDP defectors. As John Campbell and Matthew Page rightly observe in Nigeria: What Everyone Needs to Know, both APC and PDP function as “elite patronage machines for capturing the state, with little or no focus on policy or issues.” They are, in essence, two sides of the same coin.
The drift towards a de facto one-party state undermines the fundamental purpose of democratic competition: to offer citizens a meaningful choice between distinct approaches to governance. Without such differentiation, elections become rituals of affirmation, not forums for renewal.
This matters. When political choice is illusory, public trust erodes. Voter apathy deepens. Democracy loses its vitality.
Reversing this trend will require more than electoral reform. It will demand a reimagining of party politics, one that insists on programme-based platforms, internal democracy, and ideological clarity. Civic actors, media, and reform-minded politicians must challenge the culture of political fluidity and hold parties to account for their policy commitments, however sparse they may currently be.
Nigeria’s political future cannot hinge on a revolving door of defections and recycled elites. If the country is to deepen its democracy, it must rediscover the value of principled disagreement. Without that, the illusion of choice will continue to obscure the reality of one-party rule.
