For improving the quality of democracy it is enough when competitive opposition parties challenge the dominant party and force its rulers to be more accountable to the citizenry. This also helps to fix the mistakes of the ruling party.
Some countries have many political parties that exist, but only one can by law be in control. This is called a one-party dominant state. In this case opposition parties against the dominant ruling party are allowed, but have no real chance of gaining power. For example, in China all power is vested in the Communist Party of China. Other parties are allowed to exist only if they accept the leading role of the Communist Party.
In view of the above, those who are decamping from their parties to the national ruling party are doing so in order to gain the ruling party’s undue advantage. This is because, beyond doubt, it’s clearly and evidently unambiguous that today in Nigeria if you are not amidst the members of the ruling party while shaping power, you might not get chances of gaining some federal government favours; and away from being run-of-the-mill especially when you are questing for re-election ahead of 2023 general elections.
However, the way that the Nigerian power moulders are defecting from their respective political parties to the national ruling party-the APC, is seems like we are going to start practising China’s Communist party system. How can the commoners enjoy the dividend of democracy without the opposition parties in existence?
Now, the ruling party is in control of almost 23 states while the opposition party, the PDP, has only 13 states. Mai-Mala Buni’s-APC care-taker committee is ground hunting more PDP governors as there are many opposition governors who could defect to the party.
Let’s say, five opposition party governors defect to APC, only eight PDP governors will remain in the party. As such, my third paragraph may likely turn to reality.
In a nutshell, if we honestly want our democracy to continue existing we have to avoid one party system.
Mallam Musbahu Magayaki,
Sabon Fegi, Azare,
Bauchi state
