FROM PARTIES TO PERSONALITY CULT: How Nigeria's One-Man Empire Buried Opposition

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By Samuel Ashiwel

In 1999, Nigeria returned to democracy with a loud promise. Different parties, different ideas, different choices for the people. Twenty seven years later, that promise has been strangled. Governors defect like prisoners seeking parole, commissioners sing praises to survive, ministers vanish into silence, and the entire country is being forced to bow to one man. This is no longer a party system. It is a personality cult, and it is killing Nigerian democracy.


For months, Nigerians have watched a political drama that feels less like democracy and more like a surrender ceremony.


In April 2025, Delta State Governor Sheriff Oborevwori did what many thought impossible. He led the entire PDP structure that had ruled Delta since 1999, including former Governor Ifeanyi Okowa, the party that was once the face of the South South, into the APC in one afternoon. It was not a defection. It was a wholesale auction of a state. What followed was a dam break.


In June 2025, Governor Umo Eno of Akwa Ibom, after showering party leaders with brand new SUVs, announced his exit from the PDP. His message to his commissioners was blunt. Support my movement or consider yourself sacked. Politics became employment, not conviction.


By October 2025, the South East and South South fell. Governor Peter Mbah of Enugu, who won on the PDP platform, and Governor Douye Diri of Bayelsa, abandoned their party for the ruling centre. The PDP, once proud to control 14 states, woke up to find its map shrinking like ice in the sun.


December 2025 was the month Nigeria officially stopped pretending to be a multi-party state. Governor Siminalayi Fubara of Rivers, after months of political warfare that crippled governance in the oil rich state, crossed to the APC. Governor Caleb Mutfwang of Plateau, whose state the APC lost badly in 2023, followed. Governor Agbu Kefas of Taraba and Governor Umaru Fintiri of Adamawa joined. The message was clear. The centre had become the only safe place.


The wave did not stop with the PDP. In early 2026, Governor Abba Kabir Yusuf of Kano, who won under the NNPP and gave Kwankwasiyya movement its biggest victory, left for the APC. In March 2026, Governor Dauda Lawal of Zamfara did the same. The APC now boldly posts 31 of 36 on its official X handle. Thirty one states under one umbrella. Not by election. By coercion and consensus.


When a governor defects in Nigeria, he does not defect alone. He defects with the treasury, with the local government allocation, with the House of Assembly, with the ward chairmen, with the market women leaders, with the youth leaders. He takes the whole political machinery and hands it over. In Delta, new APC state chairmen loyal to Oborevwori emerged immediately after congresses. In Enugu, Bayelsa, Taraba, allies of the defected governors took over party structures. This is not democracy. It is state capture.


Why is everyone running to one place? Three reasons.


First, the weaponization of incumbency. Today, federal might is not a metaphor. It is a real hammer. States that remain in opposition complain of delayed federal projects, frozen accounts, endless EFCC invitations for their officials, and insecurity that mysteriously worsens. Governors understand the language. They fall in line not because they love the President's policies, but because they fear the President's power.


Second, the monetization of politics. Parties in Nigeria no longer have ideologies. They have investors. When one camp controls the presidency, the NNPC contracts, the NDDC budget, the federal appointments and the security contracts, staying in opposition becomes a luxury no governor can afford. Defection has become a business survival strategy. Opposition has become expensive. Loyalty has become profitable.


Third, and most dangerous, is the death of internal party democracy. Primaries have become coronations. Party constitutions have become suggestions. When a single man in Abuja decides who becomes governor, who becomes senator, who becomes local government chairman, what is left of a political party except a fan club? Today, commissioners who should debate education policy are competing for who posts the President's picture first. Senators who should check executive excess are begging for automatic tickets.


The consequences are already here and they are brutal. Without credible opposition, governance loses its mirror. No one asks hard questions in the State Assembly because 90 percent of members are now in the same party as the governor. No one interrogates the budget because to do so is to be called a saboteur. No one offers the people a real alternative because anyone with a different idea is expelled or silenced.


Voters have noticed. In the 2023 presidential election, voter turnout was 27 percent, the lowest since 1999 according to INEC. Afrobarometer shows trust in opposition parties has fallen from 38 percent in 2020 to 23 percent in 2024. Nigerians are not apathetic. They are exhausted. They no longer see any difference between parties because there is no difference. Everyone is wearing the same cap.


Nigeria did not fight Abacha, did not endure years of military dictatorship, to install civilian dictatorship in agbada. We did not abandon the one-party era to return through the backdoor of forced unanimity. The beauty of a true party system is not that everyone agrees. It is that everyone is allowed to disagree. A real political party has ideology. It has internal debates. It has primaries where a market woman's vote can defeat a governor's son. It has opposition that can say Mr President, you are wrong, and still belong to the same democratic family.


What we have today is different. What we have is a political system narrowed to worship one person. Sitting governors, commissioners, ministers, special advisers, all reduced to endorsing machines. No policy, no principle, just survival. If this continues, 2027 will not be an election. It will be an affirmation. And that affirmation will not authenticate our democracy. It will bury it.


What Nigeria needs urgently is not more decampees. What Nigeria needs is a protected opposition, party funding reform that frees parties from private pockets, and electoral laws that make it impossible for a single personality to own 31 states without winning a single vote in them. Until then, we are not practising democracy. We are managing its obituary, one defection at a time.

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