Atiku Abubakar, former vice-president, says elected officials should be barred from defecting from one party to another while in office.

 

Abubakar spoke on Monday in Abuja at the national conference on strengthening democracy in Nigeria.

 

The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) standard-bearer in the 2023 election proposed five tracks that must be addressed to enhance the country’s democracy, including institutional capacity of political parties, normative acceptance by party members, consequences for non-compliance, and judicial reform.

 

“Democracy can’t be sustained without strong political parties, especially opposition parties,” he said.

 

“Parties need to be strong and democratic enough to be able to fulfil their roles. Ownership of parties by or their subordination to individual big men is the antithesis of democracy. Party supremacy is critical.

 

“In more effective democracies, parties and candidates raise funds from the mass of members and supporters. When people invest in something, they tend to be more engaged with it. So, our people, especially party members need to be enlightened.

 

“Consequences for non-compliance: It must be made costly to ignore party supremacy/rules. Elected members decamping must vacate their seats.”

 

Nigerian politicians, including lawmakers and governors, have a knack for defecting from the party that sponsored their elections to another party.

 

In 2018, former Senate President Bukola Saraki and Yakubu Dogara, former speaker of the house of representatives, left the All Progressives Congress (APC) for the PDP.

 

Both politicians were the presiding officers of the national assembly at the time.

 

In 2020, David Umahi, who was governor of Ebonyi state at the time, decamped from the PDP to the APC.

 

In 2021, Ben Ayade, then-governor of Cross River state, defected from the PDP to the APC.

 

Umahi and Ayade were elected on the platform of the PDP.

 

‘DEMOCRACY AT RISK’

 

Abubakar said Nigeria’s democracy is at a “crossroads” and “at the risk of eroding completely”.

 

“It is not caused by one single person or one single administration. In fact, a number of us have been warning over the years that we may come to this pass if we lose our vigilance and fail to take corrective actions to protect and deepen our democracy,” he said.

 

He said no politician has “spoken out and done more to promote democratic governance in our country” than he has.

 

Abubakar harped on the need for judicial reform to “curb judicial recklessness”.

 

“In a period of less than 20 years the Nigerian judiciary has moved from being the beacon of democratic sustenance to becoming, arguably, the biggest threat to Nigeria’s democracy,” he said.

 

“That must change. The same judiciary that affirmed the primacy of parties in choosing their candidates and leaders now sanctions and indeed promotes destruction of parties by a few, and in some cases, a single individual with a personal agenda.

 

“The judiciary also seems to have replaced the voters in choosing our leaders. The involvement of the judiciary in electoral disputes was intended to affirm the choice of voters.

 

“But the judiciary, even at the highest levels, twists and contorts to find technicalities to deny voters their choice rather than affirming the voters’ choices.”