By Funmilola Adediji

A political party is said to be an organized political unit of a group of people who share the same aims, objectives, and ideology involving political issues. The main aim of a party is to acquire power. According to Joseph Schumpeter, in his writing, he observed that the first and foremost aim of each political party is to prevail over others to get into power or stay in it.

In Nigeria, a lot of people believe in political parties for one reason or another, which may be a result of the party’s organization, ideology, manifesto, purposeful leaders, and so on. These individuals are always willing to cast their vote for the party of their choice.

Political parties should consist of people with the same ideology and aim to obtain control of government. But in Nigeria, the political parties only follow one of these requirements and the second is not certain, which is ideology. We don’t have the same opinion in life that is correct, but people who plan to be a unit should have similar goals.

The first cause is the political party coalition. This is when different political parties come together to form one political party. The coalition government in Nigeria is one of the main reasons why political parties cannot be trusted. Though they claim to share the same goal instead of being united, they are most of the time divided. Many parties come together to form a government, for the sake of conquering their opposition and to be a strong political party. Many parties do this knowing full well that they don’t stand for the same things and their goals are different. Let’s not forget that if you can’t beat them, then you must join them. If you can’t work together to share the same goal, then you will have a party with different ideologies, an error that shouldn’t be found in a party.

The Party coalition started in Nigeria in 1959 when Nigeria was about to be an independent country. The general election into the House of Representation didn’t meet the law requirement; no party had an absolute majority vote. Therefore, two parties that belonged to different parts of the country formed a coalition government. Northerners People Congress (NPC) is a party dominated by the Hausa and The National Council of Nigeria and the Cameroons (NCNC). The NPC was led by Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, while the NCNC was led by Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe. A lot of people felt the coalition government was good for Nigerian politics as the political parties didn’t command national support but commanded ethnic support. But beyond being the ruling party, there were some differences among the parties which made their administration have a lot of loopholes. There was political instability after independence, which was a result of tribalism and nepotism, economic mismanagement, and religious intolerance just to mention a few.

Above the coalition government, there is still another act that has so far bridged the rules of party members sharing the same ideology, which is cross carpeting. It is a word popularly used by Nigerians to describe the swapping of a politician from one political party to another. It is very dominant in Nigeria’s political landscape. Some politicians change their political parties once they do not favor them. They go to another party that they feel is stronger to a party where they can control. The question is; is it a good political activity or do they have political ideology?

America makes use of a two-party system and its politicians can choose to change political party from opposition party to ruling party but many times they choose not to because there is what we call party ideology; a political belief accepted by a certain set of people with similar goals more about the targeted goals aimed at achieving.

Most Nigerian politicians switch parties until they find the one that favors them. With all the things said, one fact is clear, there is no political party ideology in Nigeria, it doesn’t exist in this part of the world.

Nigerians should stop following any party blindly, because they all have the same set of people, people who are not true representatives but power hungry. Let’s focus on individuals, not on political parties. Parties should not be trusted until there is a reform in the political party rules in Nigeria.