Defection, the Pathway to a One-Party Democracy in Nigeria: Threats and Challenges to Liberal Democracy

Abstract

In liberal democracies, especially those that conduct regular elections, strong opposition parties perform the duties of holding the government accountable, exposing corruption, waste, and bad governance, as well as offering alternative policies and protecting the rights and welfare of vulnerable citizens. Weak, compromised, self-serving, and easily co-opted opposition parties cannot perform these duties and are, therefore, bad for democracy. Recently, political defection became so rampant in Nigeria, with several members of opposition parties crossing over to the ruling party or other electorally viable political organisations, that people are now expressing the fear that Nigeria might soon practically become a one-party state. This apparent drift towards a one-party state is dangerous, given the well known downsides of that system of government, namely, lack of political choice, dictatorship, no checks and balances, massive corruption and ineptitude, lack of free speech and socioeconomic bottlenecks. All of these would be curtailed in liberal democratic settings through the watchdog and whistle-blowing roles of opposition political parties, thereby securing a level-playing field for all politicians, and enhancing the delivery of social and economic goods to the people. A one-party system of government, whether formally instituted or informally practised, is antithetical to the tenets of participatory democracy and good governance. It is against this background that this paper explored the topic, “Defections, the pathway to a one-party democracy in Nigeria: threats and challenges to liberal democracy”. The paper adopted capture theory as its theoretical framework while secondary qualitative data collection techniques, involving observation and document analysis, were utilized. The paper concluded that although some sections of the 1999 constitution as amended, especially 68(1)(g) and 109(1)(g), stipulate conditions for defections, these safety nets portend grave  danger to liberal democracy in Nigeria.