My fear for Nigeria's democracy

  Elections had come and gone, winners have emerged and some of the losers have taken their losses in good faith, some are taking their complaints to the election petition tribunals to contest the outcome of the election. After the last presidential election which brought to power General Buhari as the president-elect, the election was unique in the sense that the ruling people democratic party which has been at the saddle of affairs since 1999 was defeated by the opposition party, the All progressive congress for the first time in the history of the nation.

Also, the opposition party clinched the majority of the national assembly seats in the senate and the house of representatives thereby enabling the APC to constitute the majority in the national assembly, this enables the party to take over the leadership of the national assembly thereby relegating the ruling PDP to the background. 

Since the outcome of the last election, the trend of activities we are experiencing in the politics is the mass defection of the members of the losing party PDP into the APC, the exodus of members of the PDP into APC does not augur well for the nation because opposition is a vital tool for democracy to thrive effectively in any nation, opposition provides the needed criticisms, checks and balances to any government in power, thereby keeping the ruling party on its toes, this will enable the ruling party to dish out qualitative leadership to the masses.

Defection of people from a party to another party shows the lack of political ideology in our politicians, it buttresses the fact that most politicians venture into politics with the aim of satisfying their selfish motives, an average Nigerian politician puts his selfish interests before the nation, if the current defection trend is not checked, the nation will be plunged into a one-party state which was experienced in 1998 during the formative era of the PDP, between 1999 and 2003, PDP weakened the opposition parties then the AD and ANPP, during the time Nigeria could be termed a one-party state and it continued till 2013 before the emergence of the APC.

 It took the nation 16 years to salvage the country from the damaging effect of one-party system. In the real sense, it came with a huge sacrifice on the part of the masses due to the fact that the people witnessed bad leadership, impunity, corruption and infrastructural decay because of the lack of opposition to checkmate their excesses.

Quality opposition is the joy of democracy, as they are experiencing in the UK where you can never see a member of Labour Party defecting to the Conservative party because of the result of an election, likewise in America, a member of Democrat party can never decamp to the Republican because an election is lost, they always stick to their parties come rain or shine. 

When will Nigerian politicians attain this level of political maturity? The point is you are a product of your mentality, you can only change your political party but you can never change your mentality. The same set of people that destroyed the PDP are defecting to APC in order to stay relevant in politics and to have access to the national cake at the detriment of the nation.

I expect the PDP to reform the party and begin the process of rebuilding the party, this will enable it to provide the needed opposition to the APC in the next government.

Defection of politicians to other parties is not a good omen for democracy, opposition is crucial to the growth of democracy in any country. A state of one-party system must be rejected and the PDP has a crucial role to play in this.
Opposition enhances the growth of the democratic institution, it enables the party to dish it's best to the nation and it will bring development to the nation.

Opposition must be empowered to take it's rightful place in our democracy. 

Long live Nigeria.