Understanding Nigeria’s Weak Party System by Ladipo Adamolekun
After five election cycles (1999, 2003, 2007, 2011 and 2015), Nigeria’s party system has remained fundamentally weak. Strong evidence of this weakness is provided by the current inchoate state of the two major parties, the All Progressive Congress (APC) that controls the federal government and twenty-three of the thirty-six states and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) that ruled at the centre from 1999 to 2015 and controls twelve states. Besides the All Progressive Grand Alliance (APGA) that controls one state government, all the other 65 registered parties (27 of them were registered in 2017) largely exist only on paper, notwithstanding the requirements for effective national spread prescribed in Part III, D of the 1999 Constitution.
