Nigeria’s Evolving Political Party Landscape

It can seem like mockery to speak of Nigeria’s evolving political party landscape—after all, evolution denotes transformation and metamorphosis, characteristics not immediately associated with the political parties of Nigeria that only change by name, never in form or substance.

13 months before Nigeria’s next general elections, society can be summarized with an oxymoronic phrase which borrows from Thomas Hobbes: nasty, brutish, and with unrealized potential. This is no exaggeration—in 2021, at least 10,366 Nigerians were killed by terrorists, kidnappers or state security, and stories of rapes, beheadings, mass shootings and of people being burnt alive dominated the headlines. The average life expectancy of a Nigerian is 54 years, over a decade less than the regional African life expectancy of 65 and in 2018, Nigeria overtook India as the poverty capital of the world. This picture does not include Nigeria’s low human development rankings nor the resilience and talents of millions of Nigerians.

What do political parties have to do with this? Everything.

Politics is the process of organizing how we live together in a society, and political parties are the embodiment of how people organize to direct the government, inform policies and manage a country’s resources. According to Nigerian political scientist, Professor Ayo Dunmoye, a political party can be defined as, ‘a group that is publicly organised with the intention of gaining control of government to realise certain aims, or to obtain personal advantages, or both.’ Giovanni Sartori, a renowned Italian political scientist, defined parties as ‘any political group identified by an official label that presents at elections, and is capable of placing through election, candidates for public office.’

These definitions converge, indicating that political parties are the pipeline for political talent and leadership. It is here that the major Nigerian political parties fail. Even as Nigeria evolves into a two-party state, weak membership structures are the norm as powerless members are vital for fraudulent and undemocratic primaries, which in turn are needed to ensure only candidates committed to the status quo get the party ticket.