It’s the season of defection. And I want to defect too. If only to show Nigerian politicians that they don’t own the franchise of political prostitution. That’s exactly what it is. Switching allegiance from one political party to another is political harlotry. It’s a harmful habit that does no good to the polity. Instead, it harms democracy. It weakens the structures that support the party system. And to do so in the manner Nigerian politicians are doing it is both abhorrent and abominable.
Unfortunately, this has continued to define Nigerian democracy since 1951 when 20 members of the then National Congress of Nigeria and Cameroon, NCNC, defected to the Action Group, AG. In reality, prostitution is a vocation of odium and shame. The practitioners move stealthily. They operate under the red light. Even the most audacious among them still spare the public some respect for their sensibilities hence they operate furtively. They are draped in shame, their soul tormented by the high risk and harrowing uncertainty of their trade. Prostitution is not grand. It lacks grace. No grandeur, no confetti for the practitioners. Only shame and ignominy.
No matter how much they try to coat it in any contemporary veneer: corporate prostitute, runs girl, runs boy; hook-up, happy hour escort, courtesan; it still lacks nobility. Their fate is the same. They bear the same torment; articles for sale without honour; without glory. That is the profile of political prostitutes too. Men and women without shame, shorn of honour and only driven by self-interest, lucre and the fear of being asked to account. A political prostitute is one who runs away from accountability because of obvious lack of integrity. To evade the scrutiny of the law and inquiry into his conduct, he jumps ship, abandoning his old station for a new one where his ‘sins’ are written off.
In the case of the 1951 defection, their motive was to block Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe of the NCNC and ensure the emergence of Chief Awolowo of the AG as the Premier of the defunct Western Region. That singular political machination, fuelled by narrow interest rather than national interest, sowed the seed the country is reaping today in an even more fractured polity. Ever since, every Republic has witnessed sparing, sometimes, mass defections from one party to another.
Whether it’s the Second Republic defections of Richard Akinjide, Adisa Oladosu, Anthony Enahoro, S.G. Ikoku and Chief Akin Omoboriowo from the Unity Party of Nigeria (UPN) to the National Party of Nigeria (NPN) or the manic defections that signpost the Fourth Republic from 1999 till date, the chief reason for such political lechery is personal interest, not national or the people’s interest. This is the disturbing resonance of political defection; a virus more active in Nigeria than in any other globally acknowledged democracy.
The pre-Independence seed of political defection seems to have bloomed to full harvest in this 4th Republic with serial presidential election contestant, Atiku Abubakar, as the most prominent emblem of this shameful and self-serving adventure that serves no public good but only satiates the avaricious passion of the politicians. Atiku, for instance, has wandered from the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to the Action Congress Nigeria (ACN), then marched hot-foot to the All Progressives Congress (APC) before returning to the PDP between 2003 and 2019. Within the 25 plus years of this 4th Republic, Nigeria has witnessed a circus show of governors, senators, Rep members, ministers and sundry political actors mutating morphologically from party to party without changing their innate political physiology – their character which remains a combo of self-interest, lack of both ideology and basic honesty.
Defection has become so commonplace such that the people no longer flinch or twitch at this primeval aberration. The constitution and the electoral law frown at defection yet those who flout such legal safety valves meant to strengthen the party structures and give character to political parties get away with their deviant actions. They are helped by a heavily compromised judiciary and goaded by a docile and sufficiently passive electorate. A compromised judiciary, a partisan security network and an inert populace are all that is needed to make any democracy unworkable and ineffective. These ingredients are in rich supply in the Nigerian socio-political marketplace. This is even more so where the people are partitioned along ethnic and religious fault-lines.
In the coming years, what happened in Rivers and Delta states would be rated as the adventure of an apprentice, a rookie; because the days cometh when not only the politicians would defect to another party, their dogs, cats and everything and anything around them would join in the defection bazaar. Already, political defectors no longer switch allegiance in the cover of night or during nocturnal meetings. They are now emboldened in the show of shame. They flaunt it in the face of the bemused bystander. They are not ashamed to dance naked, publicly stripping themselves of the cassock of their former party and donning that of their new party, their new home. The world is watching and wondering at the brand of democracy that permits indiscriminate mutation of ideology at the frequency of a chameleon changing its colour to blend with its environment.
And perish the thought that President Bola Tinubu is the orchestrator-in-chief of the rash of defections currently scouring the polity. Never. Tinubu has come and will go but defection will persist because politicians of the next generation can only leverage on the template fashioned in 1951 till this day. Before Tinubu, there had been defections. After Tinubu, the show of shame continues. At the end, it’s the politicians who gain. Democracy and the people lose.
Democracy ought to promote civil liberties, freedom and the rule of law. One of such liberties is freedom of association which many have twisted to support political defection. No, sir, I disagree. The same Constitution that prescribes freedom of association also prohibits defection from one party to another. It’s a weighty democratic aberration with attendant consequences.
Democracy in Nigeria is under the spell of politicians. Defection is a major symptom of the malaise afflicting the polity. I see no glimmer of hope because even the judiciary that ought to rein in the rampaging politicians is under an even stronger spell of the politicians.