Mass defections to the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) is not new in Nigeria’s political history; and it may not likely lead to a one-party state as the nation has passed the route before, writes ONYEKACHI EZE

National Chairman of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) Abdullahi Ganduje may have missed the mark when he supported Nigeria becoming a one-party state. Perhaps, he was moved by the euphoria of the defections of members from opposition politicians to his party, the APC otherwise he should have been aware that features of one-party do not exist in Nigeria at the moment.

A one-party state, apart from having a single dominant political party that is legally allowed to hold power and govern, other political parties are either banned or restricted, individual freedom and freedom of speech and assembly and association is restricted as well.

Also, in one-party state, dissenting views are discouraged and suppressed, while no other political party is allowed to exist to challenge the ruling party in election. For instance, the Communist Party is the only political party in existence in China, while in North Korea, it is the Workers’ Party, and in Eritrea, it is the Front for Democracy and Justice.

However, it is an undisputable fact that Nigeria can still gravitate to a one-party state under the APC government, and all the features imposed over night, given the nature of the nation’s lawmaking body. But those with a sense of history, know that this is not the first time Nigeria is passing this route.

In Nigeria’s Second Republic, the ruling National Party of Nigeria (NPN), which won only seven out of 19 states after the 1979 general election with a simple majority in the National Assembly (36 out of the 96 Senate seats and 165 of the 443 House of Representatives seats), and had to forge alliance with another political party for its bill to pass in the legislative house, won a “landslide” in the 1983 with 12 out of 19 states.

In the legislative elections, NPN won 61 out of 91 Senate seats and 307 of the 450 House of Representatives seats, and therefore no longer required an alliance with any of the then five registered political parties to form a government, or to lobby for the passage of executive bills in the parliament. Unfortunately, the military truncated that republic. In the present political dispensation (Fourth Republic), the former ruling party, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), increased its number of states in 1999 from 21 to 27 in 2003.

There was a time the number of PDP controlled states was 31 with the defections of some state governors from the opposition political parties. The party also had overwhelming majority in the National Assembly until 2014. APC with 23 states so far, and with just simply majority in the National Assembly, have not yet reached the mark of either the NPN or the PDP when the parties were in power.

If Nigeria did not become a one-party state in 1983 and at a time when PDP was in power, it is quite improbable that it will become one now. Nigerian politicians are the most inconsistent in the world: they have no political ideology. It is only in Nigeria that a politician can belong to two political parties at the same time, and yet he brags about it. For them, defection is a political ideology.

This is because they suffer no loss for doing so. In 1982, when Abubakar Rimi joined the Nigeria Peoples Party (NPP) from the Peoples Redemption Party (PRP), he did not go with the PRP mandate to his new party. Rimi showed that he was a man of honour and integrity: he resigned as Kano State governor because he was elected on the platform of the PRP.

Almost all the opposition governors who left office in 2023 are being investigated by the EFCC for corruption… Therefore, to avoid such harassment, it is safer for the incumbents to join the ruling party and be protected

Sections 68(1)(g) and 109(1)(g) of the 1999 Constitution (as amended), state that a member of the state House of Assembly or National Assembly shall vacate his seat if he becomes a member of another political party before the expiration of his term, unless the membership change results from a division or merger within the original party.

Specifically, Section 109(1)(g) provides that a member of a House of Assembly shall vacate he seat if: being a person whose election to the House of Assembly was sponsored by a political party, he becomes a member of another political party before the expiration of the period for which that house was elected.

Besides Hon. Ifedayo Abegunde, a former member of the House of Representatives, who represented Akure North/South Federal Constituency of Ondo State, who was sacked by the Supreme Court for defecting from the Labour Party (LP) to the now defunct Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), no other defector has been punished for leaving the party through which he or she was elected into office.

The apex court had ruled that Abegunde’s defection was unconstitutional and ordered him to vacate his seat, citing Section 68(1)(g) of the constitution. The defectors often hide under the division in their party to justify their movement.

A former Delta State governor, Dr. Ifeanyi Okowa, who recently defected to the APC, made allusion to this, when he said his former party, the PDP, is not ready for the 2027 general election.

The senator representing Delta North, Ned Nwoko, who also joined APC from PDP, said his reason was the worsening instability and internal crisis in the PDP, particularly the national secretaryship tussle between Samuel Anyanwu and Sunday Ude-Okoye. The three major opposition parties – PDP, LP and New Nigeria People’ Party (NNPP), have been in crisis after the 2023 general election.

Majority of the defectors to the APC are from these three parties. APC has however, been fingered for engineer ing crisis in these parties, so as to instigate the defections. There is also a corruption angle to it. Some of those who joined APC are presently being investigated for alleged corruption by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC).

Erstwhile APC national chairman, now senator representing Edo North, Adams Oshiomhole, had in 2019, promised politicians who join the APC that their sins would be forgiven. Almost all the opposition governors who left office in 2023 are being investigated by the EFCC for corruption but none of the APC former governors has suffered the same fate.

Therefore, to avoid such harassment, it is safer for the incumbents to join the ruling party and be protected. Survival instinct is another reason motivating these defections.

The nation’s flawed electoral system does not encourage fair competition. Nigeria’s electoral system can best be described in the famous quote from William Shakespeare’s Macbeth, “Fair is foul, and foul is fair!” This, perhaps, explains why one’s chances of winning are brighter in the ruling party than in the opposition, no matter one’s performance in office. However, if the reports making the rounds are anything to go by, the defections portend danger to Nigeria’s democracy.

Some of the defections, mostly from the South, were said to have been motivated by the need to allow President Bola Tinubu to get a second term in office, in line with North-South rotation of power. In any case, Ganduje should bear in mind that those moving to APC now will move out of the party if the table turns around in future. After all, majority of those occupying prominent positions in the present APC government, including Ganduje himself, served as governors and in other positions during the PDP’s 16 years in office.