Nigeria is Already a De facto One Party State

Nigeria’s political system officially started in 1923 with the establishment of Herbert Macaulay’s Nigerian National Democratic Party. This was after the coming into force of Clifford Constitution of 1922. Several political parties such as the National Council of Nigeria and the Cameroons (later changed to the National Convention of Nigerian Citizens), Action Group, Northern Peoples Congress, Northern Elements Peoples Union, Union of Middle Belt Congress were later formed.

Traditionally, Nigeria has been a multiparty democracy. With the exception of the two-party system brought by Military President, Ibrahim Babangida, during the aborted Third Republic (1990 -1993), Nigeria has always had plural parties. As at today, Nigeria has 19 registered political parties officially licensed by the Independent National Electoral Commission.



However, many political watchers have started to raise alarm that the country is sliding into a one party state. What does that mean? Perhaps I should first say what it doesn’t mean. A one party state sometimes does not refer to presence of only one political party as with the case in the Republic of China which is a communist state.

Tanzania also once had a single political party before embracing multiparty democracy. Metaphorically, an official one party state refers to a country with one dominant political party. Legally speaking Nigeria is a de jure multiparty democracy but a de facto one party state.

Given the mass defection of elected governors, federal and state lawmakers from opposition political parties into the All Progressives Congress, Nigeria is now a de facto one party state because the remaining eighteen are too weak to pose a serious electoral challenge to the dominant APC. This was the scenario that played out in this country between 1999 – 2015 when Peoples Democratic Party held sway at the centre. The popular cliché then was PDP and others.

When this reference was being made, Nigeria moved from three registered political parties to having a 91 registered parties by 2011 before many of them were deregistered by INEC after the 2011 General Election and 74 was left to contest the 2015 General Election. Further deregistration by INEC by the powers conferred on the Commission by Section 225A of the Nigerian Constitution has made us to have a manageable 19 that we currently have now. It is important to note that countries that are presumed to have two party system such as Ghana, UK and US are actually multiparty democracies.

In US there are dozens of political parties. The dominant two parties are the Republican Party and the Democratic Party. Other parties, often generally termed “third parties”, in the U.

S. include The Green Party, Libertarians, Constitution Party and Natural Law Party. In the United Kingdom, the dominant political parties are the Conservative and the Labour Party.

However, according to the BBC, there are several different parties in the UK each with different ideas and policies. The largest parties include: The Liberal Democrats; the United Kingdom Independence Party; the Green Party; the Scottish National Party; Plaid Cymru in Wales and the DUP and Sinn Féin in Northern Ireland. In Ghana the Electoral Commission indicated that there are 15 parties registered at the time of the 2024 general election.

However, the dominant parties are the National Democratic Congress and the New Patriotic Party. If we go by the political parties that have won presidential election since the beginning of this Fourth Republic in 1999, they are only two, namely the PDP which held sway from 1999 – 2015 and the APC which has won three general elections back to back in 2015, 2019 and 2023. However, like I said earlier on Nigeria is effectively a de facto one party state from 2024 when the exodus of opposition political party chieftains into APC began.

Now, it is APC and others. Is this ideal for our democracy? Not at all. However, while the opposition political parties are quick to blame the APC for their woes, I beg to disagree.

Many of the opposition political parties are in a self-inflicted intra-party leadership crisis. Take for instance, the PDP has been facing an intractable leadership crisis since it lost power at the centre in 2015. After the electoral defeat, the party leadership set up Senator Ike Ekweremadu’s committee to look into the remote and immediate reasons it lost the presidency to the APC.

This report has been largely unimplemented. Between 2015 and now, PDP has had four national chairmen. It was former Governor of Bauchi State, Adamu Muazu that led the party to the 2015 General Election.

The moment the party lost the presidency in 2015, Muazu was forced to resign. Senator Ali Modu Sheriff was brought in as the National Chairman of the party. Soon after, he was shoved aside, and Former governor of Kaduna State, Ahmed Mohammed Makarfi, was made to head a caretaker committee to midwife another congress and convention.

This was challenged by Ali Modu Sheriff who took the party to court. That litigation ended at the Supreme Court. Prince Uche Secondus was elected to lead the party but he soon fell out of favour with powerful interest group within the party and he was shoved aside three months to the end of his terure.

Dr Iyorcha Ayu was drafted in as the national chairman of PDP and he led the party to another electoral defeat in 2023. He was also pressured to resign when his Ward Executive in Benue State suspended him. Since the exit of Ayu, Ambassador Umar Damagun has been the chairman in acting capacity since 2023.

A new convention is being planned for later this year. Same fate has befallen the Labour Party with Julius Abure-led National Working Committee being in a running battle with the Nigeria Labour Congress and some of the party stalwarts, including the presidential candidate of the party in 2023, Mr. Peter Obi, and Governor Alex Otti of Abia, which is the only state won by the party.

The New Nigeria Peoples Party which won Kano State governorship election in 2023 has also been engulfed in leadership tussle. APGA’s leadership crisis was only laid to rest sometime last year after the Supreme Court judgement on who is the authentic leader of the party. It is trite that a house divided against itself cannot stand.

If the current one-party status of Nigeria is reversed, the opposition political parties will need to work assiduously to resolve their lingering intra-party crises. It took the merger of Action Congress of Nigeria, Congress for Progressives Change, All Nigerian Peoples Party and a faction of APGA led by former governor of Imo State, Rochas Okorocha to form All Progressives Congress in July 2013. Factionalisation of opposition political parties has created a pathway for mass defection of their elected party members into the ruling APC with the last being the Governor of Delta State, Sheriff Oborevwori who officially dissolved all the PDP party structures and elected members into the APC from PDP on Monday, April 28, 2025.

The argument that APC government including the presidency is using the anti-corruption agencies and financial resources to induce members of the opposition to join APC are not entirely true. In September 2011, former Governor of Lagos State and leader of Action Congress of Nigeria, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu (now president Tinubu) was docked before the Code of Conduct Tribunal, sitting in Abuja, on allegations that he operated 10 foreign accounts while in office between 1999 and 2007. A three-count criminal charge was preferred against him by the Federal Government.

The CCB in November same year dismissed the allegations and he was discharged and acquitted. That was deemed to be a political witch-hunt under PDP but did that make Tinubu to join PDP? Why I cited this instance is that the popular believe is that many of those defecting into APC want protection from prosecution from financial fraud or corruption allegation. Am not sure that joining APC will be a bulwark against prosecution for corrupt practices.

Defections are carried out for multiple reasons, some of which could be voluntary exit from the party on which they are elected because of intra-party crises, other reasons could be to gain advantage at seeking reelection, for political appointments, contracts, visibility, etc. I admit that having a de facto or de jure one-party state is inimical to our democratic growth. However, having good governance goes beyond the party system in operation.

China is officially a one-party state, but it’s performing far better than Nigeria in economic and development terms. China is a technological giant and has a military might that his adversaries are unwilling to test. Of what immense benefit has our multi-party democracy been to us with all the development indices pointing south.

We face endemic corruption, insecurity, bad governance, high cost of living, high rate of unemployment and soaring poverty. As far as I am concerned, irrespective of the party system we run, the end result should be higher standard of living for the citizens. Any system that will deliver security and welfare of citizen will earn my support.

X: @jideojong.