Election without political parties: Outlook towards 2027 (2), by Usman Sarki
“Democracy is not merely a form of government. It is primarily a mode of associated living, of conjoint communicated experience.” — John Dewey
The reactions to my recent article, “Election Without Political Parties: Outlook Towards 2027”, have been several, and they raised important questions that deserve further examination. If political parties in Nigeria are losing their institutional identities to personalities, temporary alliances and informal coalitions, should the blame rest entirely with politicians who defect, rebel against their parties or support candidates across party lines? Or must the parties themselves accept some responsibility? This brings us directly to the question of party loyalty. Loyalty is often demanded in Nigerian politics as though it were an unconditional obligation owed by members to their parties. The nebulous language of “party supremacy” is invoked whenever disagreement arises. But loyalty cannot operate only in one direction. A political party that expects fidelity from members must itself demonstrate fairness, independence, inclusion, consistency and respect for its own rules.
If a party denies members a level playing field, manipulates primaries, closes avenues for reconciliation or arbitrarily imposes candidates, it should hardly be surprised when aggrieved members seek alternatives or engage in “anti-party” activities. Party loyalty must therefore be reciprocal. Members owe loyalty to the party, but the party equally owes justice and due process to its members. This distinction is important because otherwise every act of dissent becomes indiscipline, while every action of party leadership is presumed legitimate, no matter how illegal. That cannot be internal democracy. Indeed, a political party should itself be a school of democracy. If democracy is absent within the party, how can that organisation effectively deepen democracy in the country? The deeper problem may therefore not simply be that Nigeria is approaching an election without political parties. It may be that we have not sufficiently developed genuinely democratic parties in the first place. One respondent to my earlier article described Nigerian parties as “alien agencies” and as the “missing rib” of our democracy. The expressions may appear severe, but the questions behind them are legitimate. Are our parties sufficiently anchored in society? Do ordinary members influence their direction? Are candidates selected competitively and fairly? Do parties debate policy seriously? Are manifestos products of sustained ideological reflection, or documents assembled after candidates have already emerged?
The debate over the so-called Rainbow Coalition also deserves historical perspective. Cross-party political understanding is not entirely new in Nigeria. In 2003, the Alliance for Democracy supported President Olusegun Obasanjo’s re-election while continuing to contest other offices under its own platform. Coalition politics itself is also legitimate. The formation of the APC before the 2015 election demonstrated how disparate political forces could go beyond temporary cooperation and merge into a new national platform. The present situation should therefore not be treated as wholly unprecedented. What is noteworthy is the prominence such arrangements have acquired as 2027 approaches. FCT Minister Nyesom Wike has maintained that support for President Bola Ahmed Tinubu does not require the PDP to abandon its governorship and legislative candidates. APC governors, on the other hand, have expressed concern that an arrangement supporting the President while opposing APC candidates elsewhere could weaken the party.
The important point is not merely to decide which side is right. The controversy reveals the changing relationship between presidential support and party allegiance. Can a citizen support the presidential candidate of one party, a governor from another and a senator from a third? Certainly. Voters are not constitutionally bound to vote a straight party ticket. Split-ticket voting may even represent careful discrimination among candidates. The deeper concern begins when party distinctions become so weak that such choices are no longer based on programmes, ideology or performance, but on personalities, patronage and access to power. Nigeria must therefore move towards issue-driven rather than personality-driven politics. Political parties should be distinguishable by their positions on security, the economy, education, healthcare, employment, infrastructure, taxation, energy, federalism, poverty reduction and foreign policy.
A citizen should be able to compare two party manifestos and understand clearly where they differ. Instead, political discussion increasingly revolves around “permutations” and “structures”: who will win or lose; who controls governors, local governments, legislators, financiers, delegates, traditional intermediaries and mobilisation networks? Structures have their place in politics, but they cannot become substitutes for ideas or programmes. The reactions to my earlier article also raised the issue of incumbency. Political dominance should never be confused with electoral invincibility. Governments may possess formidable structures, but the ultimate constitutional authority belongs to the electorate. According to the respondents to my article, Borno State provides an instructive example. In 2003, incumbent Governor Mala Kachalla lost his re-election bid to Senator Ali Modu Sheriff. The democratic lesson lies not merely in who won, but in the principle that incumbency should never make electoral defeat impossible. Modu Sheriff, in turn, lost the election to the Senate to a little-known person in Borno Central.
The 2015 presidential election provided an even more significant example. President Goodluck Jonathan conceded defeat to Muhammadu Buhari, enabling Nigeria’s first democratic transfer of federal power from one political party to another. That episode demonstrated that democratic maturity is measured not only by the ability to win elections, but also by the capacity to lose with dignity when the process is credible. This is where the debate about political parties converges with the wider question of institutions. Political parties matter greatly, but credible institutions matter just as much. Electoral bodies must command public confidence. Courts must be respected. Security agencies must act impartially. Governments should not use state institutions to intimidate opponents, while opposition parties should not treat defeat in a credible election as an invitation to destabilisation. Likewise, opposition parties must demonstrate that they represent more than collections of disappointed aspirants. A credible opposition should articulate a coherent alternative government. The same principle applies to the ruling party. It cannot rely indefinitely on incumbency, defections or powerful office holders as substitutes for performance, internal democracy and organisation.
Ultimately, democracy requires meaningful choice—not merely a choice among personalities, ethnicities, regions and political godfathers, but among competing ideas, programmes and records of performance.
Perhaps the expression “election without political parties” points to a deeper problem than I originally suggested. Nigeria’s challenge is not simply that politicians are becoming larger than their parties. It is that the parties themselves are shrinking in significance and have often failed to become larger than their politicians.
Until that relationship is reversed, defections, temporary coalitions, permutations, structures and personality politics will continue to dominate the landscape. The task before Nigeria is therefore not merely to preserve political parties as legal vehicles for elections, but to transform them into genuinely democratic institutions worthy of loyalty. Only then can party supremacy acquire moral as well as organisational meaning.
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