IS Nigeria heading for a one party system? Are opposition parties being swallowed by the waves of CHANGE that is blowing across the country? Is the PDP boat sinking considering the spate of defection? What kind of opposition would the left-over be? These are questions that have agitated in my mind since the dismantling of PDP’s wing from the centre few days ago.

I hope it would not go this way because, for a robust and a healthy political environment, the opposition must exist to keep the government in power on its toes. The country did not enjoy this since 1999, until the birth of ACN that swept South-West in 2011 general elections.

A glance at the the history has shown that carpet crossing or defection from one political party to another has become synonymous with Nigerian politicians who dump platforms which bring them to power at the slightest provocation or arguments or when their ambitions cannot be realized in such a political platform.

Monetary inducement and ethnic considerations are also some of the reasons for carpet crossing by politicians right from the pre-independence era through the First Republic to the present dispensation.

Nigeria recorded its first political carpet-crossing when several of the defunct Western Region House of Assembly members of National Council of Nigeria and Cameroon (NCNC) led by Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe decamped to Action Group (AG) led by Chief Obafemi Awolowo in 1951, giving AG control over the House and causing the leader of NCNC to beat a retreat to his ethnic base, the then Eastern Nigeria where he formed the ruling government.

During the Second Republic, 1979-1983 Chief Akin Omoboriowo, Chief Fagbamigbe, Senator Lai Joseph all of Unity Party of Nigeria (UPN) defected to National Party of Nigeria NPN), and at the end Chief Fagbamigbe was gruesomely murdered while Chief Akin Omoboriowo, former Deputy Governor of Old Ondo State only escaped being hacked down by whiskers courtesy of the protection extended to him from the Federal Government, as he had to relocate to Lagos, the then Federal Capital. Equally, in the Second Republic, Senator N.N. Anah of the defunct Nigeria Peoples Party (NPP) headed byDr.Nnamdi Azikiwe, defected to National Party of Nigeria (NPN).

The first major political carpet-crossing in the Fourth Republic was carried out by the then Vice President to Chief Obasanjo, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar who defected to Action Congress (AC) in 2007 at the peak of his political battles with his boss, Obasanjo. Equally, Senators Wahab Dosummu and Musuliu Obanikoro, Dr. Kingsley Ogunlewe and late Funsho Williams, all defected from Alliance for Democracy (AD) to the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). Bola Tinubu, Bisi Akande and Lam Adesina, all of the then Alliance for Democracy (AD) moved to Action Congress (AC), while Segun Mimiko left PDP to LP.

So, from the above back ground, one can clearly deduce that the brain behind jumping ship has been to satisfy one’s political ambition and not neccessarily to alliviate the sufering of the downtrodden. Again, I will gladly be saying here that the defectors are playing games over our intelligent and of course, capitalizing on the vulnerability of the poor masses.This is not smartness but a pomotion of evil in the society. It is high time we stop deceiving the electorate.

Mr. Sunday Alifia,  a political analyst, wrote from Ibadan, Oyo State.