President of the Nigerian Political Science Association (NPSA), Professor Hassan Saliu in this interview with Weekend Trust speaks on the implications of recent alignments and defections in the political sphere and the state of opposition ahead of the 2027 election.
What’s the implication of the defections we are experiencing in recent times?
There is no law that says if you belong to party A, you must live and die there. If there are circumstances that warrant you leaving you can leave going by the spirit of our constitution.
However defections that we have seen in Nigeria have not been guided by any principle or ideological consideration. What appears to be the norm or the rule is that people are looking for what to put in their stomach or those who already have what to put in their stomach and are looking for a kind of security cover over certain misdeeds that might have taken place at their last duty post.
So we should be worried about defection because they are not being informed by the need to grow our democracy, they are not being informed by serious ideological consideration. To that extent one can say that defections in Nigeria have only been serving one purpose and the purpose is to moderate intra-party conflicts as well as inter-party conflicts.
Instead of witnessing serious problems in a party, those who feel dissatisfied can migrate to a different party, that is the only relief I think it is providing but in terms of growing the Nigerian democracy, I am not too sure. Because upon defection, you don’t see a change of attitude. A PDP governor who defected to APC would continue life as usual.
Going by the recent defection, are you seeing a trajectory of Nigeria becoming a one-party state?
I want to caution Nigerians about the way they frame the problem. One-party state is a constitutionally ordered arrangement. What we have in Nigeria, there is no process of anybody legislating other parties out of existence. So what I would say, just as we say, opposition, opposition, the phrase is only common to parliamentary or opposition parties, rather in the presidential system we call them minority parties and then majority parties.
To that extent I would say we are not moving towards one party, rather we are moving towards one dominant party state, that is where we are.
What becomes of the opposition party ahead of the 2027 election?
Let me say that let us be fair to the ruling party. The other parties have their own internal problems. If people are saying that it is the ruling party that is putting fire into PDP, I beg to disagree, PDP has always been passing through problems even before President Tinubu came to power. In 2022/2023, we saw how they were divided. Was it Tinubu that brought about G5 (a group of five governors)? Of course the ruling party would smile and laugh when the opposition parties are having problems but I think it would be too simplistic to put all the blame on the head of the ruling party.
But with the current state of the PDP, do you think the party can actually make a headway in the 2027 election with their leaders and governors defecting to the ruling party?
Well until the party gets its acts together, for now it is a remote possibility but it is possible for them to get together and make the necessary impact. But with the way things are now, with the way things have been with the party since 2022 or 2023, I doubt. In 2014 when Atiku, Bukola Saraki, Baraje and the rest walked out of the party, the position of the President was that, ‘to hell with them.’
I think we all knew what happened. In 2023, some five governors rose against the PDP though they were members of the PDP but the party structure chose to ignore them, we know what has happened or what is still happening now. So what I am saying now is that it is not a cheering news that governors of a particular party are contemplating moving to another party and saying to hell with them, that you can win without a governor, that is not possible. Obi’s phenomenon is quite different from any other phenomenon we can think about. It happens once in a while when a personality would emerge on the political scene and try to make the necessary waves but it doesn’t happen all the time. Let PDP not deceive itself. The party needs to get together and reconcile its members.
It appears President Tinubu doesn’t have an opposition in 2027?
They are playing into his hand, they are playing his cards for him. Why would anybody be coerced? The act of coercion means that an offence has been committed, why did you commit the offence? So this is an argument of convenience. The truth of the matter is that our politics is bereft of any serious ideological inclination, people go in and come out and those who are winning elections are winning largely because of resources and when you win you recoup your resources.
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