On Friday, May 9, 2025, the National Chairman of the All Progressives Congress, APC, Dr Abdullahi Ganduje, gave the surest inkling into the immediate objective of the ruling party – make Nigeria a one-party state.
Since the Governor of Delta State, Sheriff Oborevwori, decamped from the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, with all his cabinet members as well as local government elected officials, it opened a Pandora Box of people leaving the opposition parties in droves to the APC.
Already, Governor Umo Eno of Akwa Ibom has also indicated his imminent departure from the PDP to the APC.
Already, several lawmakers across the country are moving in droves to the APC. And there seems to be no end to the exodus to the ruling party.
The reality remains that the movement is not ideologically driven, rather the lure of self, a herd instinct of survival.
If anything, the claim by the APC National Chairman that the APC was not gunning for a one-party state, but welcomes the idea, if Nigerians wanted it, is the height of the hypocrisy of the political elite in Nigeria..
The ruling establishment usually hides under the guise of the “people” while they remain basically serve-serving and overly corrupt to the detriment of the people.
“We are not saying we are working for a one-party system, but if this is the wish of Nigerians, we cannot quarrel with that,” Ganduje told State House correspondents after he led three Peoples Democratic Party senators from Kebbi State to a meeting with President Bola Tinubu at the Aso Rock Villa.
When was the referendum held that it is what the people want?
Further to Gandjue’s take is the ambivalent position of former President Goodluck Jonathan.
Speaking on the vexatious matter, he said: “When you listen to the news or go through the social media that is one thing (one-party) that on an occasion like this, one needs to talk about. Yes, countries have practiced a one-party system.
“It may not be evil after all. But Julius Nyerere of Tanzania used one-party state to stabilise the country in their early days of independence. His country, just like Nigeria, has many tribes and tongues and two principal religions, Christianity and Islam. If he had not done that, some parties would toe the line of region, some on the basis of tribes, and unity would be difficult. But it was properly planned. It was not by accident.
“If we must as a nation go the one-party route, it must be designed. It must be planned by experts and we must know what we are going into. But if we go through the backdoor by political manipulations, then we will be going into a crisis. So, I will advise that probably in a country like Nigeria, we allow the system to stay as it is, which is a multi-party system. But if we for some reason must go one-party, it should not be an accident.”
This is not statesmanship! The former president ought to have demonstrated clarity on the dangers of a one-party state in Nigeria given the country’s political history. Nigeria is overly diverse to be boxed into one corner and no alternatives.
The migration to the APC at present is down to the flawed electoral system in the country where power is gotten at all cost with little or no remedy from the courts.
Once the system is anti-electoral theft, and that votes truly belong to the people, then the present shamelessness of leaving the party on which the people entrusted their votes to you will not be celebrated.
It is instructive that the country and its political actors heed the warning of Steven Levitsky who warned, “This is how elected autocrats subvert democracy—packing and “weaponizing” the courts and other neutral agencies, buying off the media and the private sector (or bullying them into silence), and rewriting the rules of politics to tilt the playing field against opponents. The tragic paradox of the electoral route to authoritarianism is that democracy’s assassins use the very institutions of democracy—gradually, subtly, and even legally—to kill it.”
