By every measure of democratic principle, the recent defections of elected politicians from the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) are nothing short of a wholesale abandonment of democratic principles and corrosive betrayal of the party platforms under which they were entrusted with popular mandates. The mass exodus Governor Douye Diri of Bayelsa State, together with the entire PDP caucus in the State House of Assembly and the state executive council, constitutes a brazen subversion of representative democracy, an act that cannot be euphemistically sanitized as pragmatism. These defections are neither incidental nor benign; they are the unmistakable harbinger of a creeping one-party hegemony, eroding the sinews of political accountability.
In a display of unparalleled political perfidy, Governor Peter Mbah of Enugu had already paved the way, justifying his departure as a purportedly pragmatic move to “serve the people” under a stronger platform. These justifications, however, crumble under scrutiny, revealing an unsettling willingness among Nigeria’s political elite to abandon principle for political expediency. Elected officials, by the very definition of a representative democracy, are custodians of mandates bestowed by the electorate—not mere wanderers chasing the winds of power. When governors and lawmakers abandon the party under which they were chosen, they dilute the people’s choice and signal that allegiance to ideology and platform is optional, while opportunism is rewarded. What emerges is a democracy in hibernation, sleepwalking toward a de facto one-party state. Nigeria’s democracy risks becoming a hollow shell: vibrant elections reduced to ritualistic affirmations of power already consolidated, with opposition rendered symbolic at best.
Representative democracy is predicated upon the sanctity of electoral mandates. Citizens do not vote for individuals in isolation; they endorse programs, ideologies, and platforms that articulate collective aspirations. To unilaterally abandon the platform that conferred office is to abrogate the social contract itself. Governor Mbah’s rationalization – that migration to the APC is a vehicle for optimally “serving the people” – is sophistical at best, a specious attempt to cloak opportunism in the garb of public service. Such rationalizations reduce the electorate to passive spectators in a theatre of political expediency, where loyalty is mercurial and principle a disposable artifact.
The implications are profound. Defections of this magnitude create a feedback loop where the ruling party grows ever stronger, and political alternatives weaken with each high-profile departure. The PDP, once a formidable counterweight, is left reeling, while the APC consolidates influence across states, not through popular persuasion or policy success, but through the absorption of defectors – a mechanism more reminiscent of hegemonic regimes than of a healthy democracy. The systemic consequences are catastrophic. Each defection is a centrifugal force, further concentrating political power within the ruling APC, diminishing opposition efficacy, and undermining the foundational premise of alternation in power. What emerges is a polity wherein elections are decoupled from accountability, and the ostensible plurality of political parties becomes a simulacrum; a perfunctory ritual that legitimizes entrenched dominance rather than ensures genuine contestation.
Let there be no equivocation: this is not mere politics; this is the desecration of democratic ethos. The audacity of abandoning electoral platforms mid-tenure signals to the citizenry that their votes are mutable commodities, subject to the caprice of self-interest. Nigeria’s political class, in this context, has exhibited a moral and institutional laxity so egregious that it imperils the very continuity of a multiparty democracy. To arrest this inexorable slide toward quasi-authoritarianism, it is imperative that anti-defection statutes be invoked with rigor, that civil society mobilizes unflinchingly, and that the electorate recalibrates expectations toward ethical probity rather than rhetorical legerdemain. Let this serve as a categorical indictment: the abdication of mandate for opportunistic affiliation is a blight upon the toga of Nigerian democracy, a stain that presages a polity sleepwalking toward the ossification of a single-party dominion.
Nigeria’s democracy is not an abstraction to be traded at convenience. It is a covenant between rulers and the ruled, now imperiled by those who treat allegiance as optional and principle as disposable.
Nigeria’s political elite must confront the moral rot inherent in such defections. Democracy thrives on competition, debate, and alternation of power. When the lure of the ruling party trumps ideological fidelity, the electorate suffers, and the nation inches toward authoritarian normalization. The silent acceptance of this exodus signals to voters that their ballots are malleable, contingent on the whims of politicians, rather than instruments of enduring influence.
If Nigeria is to avoid sliding into a single-party hegemony masked as democracy, there must be consequences for those who abandon their platforms mid-term. The time to arrest this slide is now, before the toga of democracy is so threadbare that all that remains is the illusion of choice. The people entrusted these leaders with mandates, not keys to their own ambition. Nigeria cannot afford to forget this, lest it sleepwalk into a democracy where elections matter only for spectacle, and opposition exists only in name.