Nigerian politics is never without a running play, and the latest act features a familiar, wearying spectacle: the anticipated defection of the Governor of Enugu State from the PDP to the APC. For weeks, the press has buzzed with a relentless, theatrical coverage that is far from free – hype men get paid, and as one journalist candidly told me, “This is our season.” But let us be clear: this defection is not ideological. It is not the fruit of a spiritual awakening or a profound political epiphany. It is transactional, pure and simple. It is protection money, an entrance fee paid to shelter under a more powerful umbrella, akin to pledging loyalty to a mafia boss in exchange for immunity. This is the kind of audacity that thrives only in a system where consequences are negotiable and convictions are optional. The governor’s move is not an anomaly; it is a ritual, a performance repeated ad nauseam across Nigeria’s political landscape, where these crossings are less about belief and more about survival. They are not acts of courage but gestures of convenience, not declarations of principle but signals of alignment with the central locus of power.
This essay explores these defections as a potent metaphor for our national condition – symbols of a profound systemic inertia, of elite self-preservation, and of the road not taken in our long, weary search for political stability. We must trace their sordid history, dissect their corrosive economic and social impact, and ask what it means for a nation when the only ideology that truly endures is the ideology of self-interest. In Nigeria’s political marketplace, defections have become the accepted currency of negotiation, where principles are liquidated for access to federal patronage and immunity from accountability. The spectacle itself is the perfect distraction, the political equivalent of a celebrity breakup in pop culture: headline-grabbing, endlessly analyzed on television panels, but ultimately inconsequential to the underlying plot. Politicians switch jerseys, but never their playbooks. The same actors simply find a new stage, while the script of national stagnation remains unchanged.
The historical stage for this drama is well-trodden. Defections are woven into the very fabric of our post-colonial politics, dating back to 1951 when members of the NCNC defected to the Action Group, altering the balance of power even before independence. But what was once an occasional strategic realignment has morphed into an institutionalized ritual. The formation of the APC in 2013, which triggered a mass exodus from the then-ruling PDP, demonstrated the raw power of coordinated defection, leading to an historic victory in 2015. Yet, what began as a strategic realignment has devolved into a crude survival tactic. The recent moves, from Rivers, Delta, Ákwá Ibom to Enugu, are not about building a new political vision but about seeking refuge in the ruling party’s fortress. The script is always the same: a press conference brimming with lofty rhetoric about “new beginnings” and “the people’s interest,” a symbolic handing over of the party structure – 260 councillors, 24 lawmakers, the entire state executive, all crossing over in a choreographed coronation, with aides waving new flags and chanting praise for the president. It is a performance of power, not principle.
To truly grasp the modern spectacle of a governor and his entire political structure crossing the carpet in a single, choreographed ceremony, one must understand that this is not an aberration but the culmination of a long-standing national pathology. Political defections in Nigeria have evolved from what were once seen as dramatic acts of betrayal into fully systemic rituals, a deeply ingrained operating system that systematically undermines stability, erodes any semblance of ideology, and exposes the road we have never taken: the difficult path of genuine institutional reform and ideological clarity. The story of defections is, in many ways, the hidden biography of Nigeria itself. The original sin can be traced to 1951, in the hallowed halls of the Western House of Assembly in Ibadan, even before the flag of independence was raised. There, members of the NCNC, led by the formidable Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe, executed a strategic defection to Chief Obafemi Awolowo’s Action Group. This wasn’t merely a shift in allegiance; it was a raw, early exercise in realpolitik that fundamentally altered the balance of power and set a corrosive precedent. It proved, from the very dawn of our political consciousness, that the ship of state could be successfully – and profitably – steered by the compass of opportunism rather than the stars of principle.
This trajectory has only intensified, evolving in scale and brazenness from a political tactic into a national identity. In the First Republic, defections like those of Samuel Akintola, whose break with Awolowo to form the NNDP and align with the Northern People’s Congress (NPC) was fueled by a volatile mix of personal ambition and regional calculation, were still rare enough to cause shockwaves. They bore the faint, dying imprint of strategic, regional interests, often cloaked in the rhetoric of “national unity.” By the Second Republic, the practice had become a more refined instrument for consolidating federal influence. The National Party of Nigeria (NPN), under Shehu Shagari, perfected the art of using the “carrot” of federal appointments and the “stick” of state-backed intimidation to woo opposition figures, though the practice was still somewhat restrained by the fading echoes of the founding fathers’ ideologies. However, it is in our current Fourth Republic that defections have exploded into their full, spectacular, and farcical form. The early years of PDP dominance, under Olusegun Obasanjo, were punctuated by strategic jumps, often to escape anti-corruption probes, a trend I witnessed firsthand as state-level commissioners would miraculously switch parties just as the EFCC’s net began to close.
But the game changed entirely with the formation of the APC in 2013. This was not merely a merger of parties; it was a corporate-style, hostile takeover bid on the Nigerian state. It triggered an unprecedented mass migration from the PDP – a calculated exodus of five governors, scores of senators, and legions of representatives that culminated in the historic defeat of an incumbent president in 2015. As political scientist Prof. Jideofor Adibe aptly notes, this event “transformed defection from a political risk into a political strategy.” This victory, however, did not signal an end to the practice. Instead, it sanctified it. Defections have since become a cyclical fever that spikes predictably before elections, a ritual where politicians, like the proverbial vultures, circle not around issues of governance, but around the carcass of power, reading the political winds not for policy direction, but for signals on where to anchor their personal ambitions. The defection is no longer a political gamble; it is a calculated career move in a system that has perfected the art of rewarding treachery and punishing loyalty. It is the ultimate proof of the late political economist, Claude Ake’s, haunting diagnosis that in Nigeria, politics is not an extension of economics, but the very foundation of it – the primary arena for accumulation, where principles are the first casualty in the war for personal enrichment.
Nigeria runs a schizophrenic political system. To truly understand the phenomenon of defection, we must first diagnose the political organism in which this virus thrives. And here, both social and political scientists are often at a loss, for Nigeria presents a case of bewildering contradictions, a system that defies easy classification. On paper, we are a democracy, a federal republic with a constitution that enshrines the separation of powers and the regular consultation of the people’s will. But paper is patient, and it bears the weight of our fictions without complaint. In reality, the Nigerian political system is a chameleonic entity, a shifting amalgam of different, often contradictory, governance models operating simultaneously across its various spheres and communities. In one state, you find the faint, struggling echoes of democratic practice; in another, the raw, unvarnished rule of a feudal godfather; at the center, an increasingly opaque system that resembles a corporate oligarchy managed by a political board of directors. We may want democracy, we may mouth its platitudes at international summits and in national day speeches, but our actions, our political DNA, speak a different, more primal language. We are a nation that craves the strongman, the authoritarian father figure, yet we fear the international stigma of saying so aloud. We perform the rituals of multiparty elections with religious fervor, yet we despise the core principle of a loyal and vibrant opposition, viewing it not as a necessary check on power but as treasonous dissent.
This inherent confusion makes opposition politics in Nigeria perhaps the greatest farce of all. It is a stage play where the actors loudly declaim their lines of conflict by day, only to dine and divvy up the spoils together in the same cozy restaurants by night. True, ideologically-grounded opposition has never existed in the real sense of the word. It is a phantom, a ghost we invoke to legitimize a process that requires it in name only. When sheer, unadulterated greed does not drive our political class to compromise their stated positions, then tribal and ethnic alliances and affiliations swiftly do. The unspoken pact of elite solidarity consistently trumps any commitment to partisan principle. The politician from the South-East who rails against the hegemony of the ruling party will, in a heartbeat, abandon that critique if offered a ministerial position that “balances the equation” for his ethnic group. The senator from the Niger Delta who threatens to expose corruption will suddenly fall silent when his own pipeline of patronage is secured. We are trapped in what can only be described as a “marriage of bollocks,” a forced and dysfunctional union held together not by shared values or common purpose, but by the brittle glue of colonial inheritance and the relentless, shared looting of the national treasury. It is a marriage where the partners despise each other but cannot afford a divorce, because the entire edifice of their wealth and status is built on maintaining the fraudulent union.
And in this fraught, chaotic, and cynical marriage, defection is its most intimate and revealing intercourse. It is the act that lays bare the true nature of the relationship – transactional, consummated not by love or ideology, but by mutual need and strategic calculation. Defection is the mechanism through which the system self-regulates, co-opts dissent, and maintains its unstable equilibrium. It is the proof that our democracy is a mere veneer, a democratic masquerade dancing to an authoritarian rhythm. The defector is not a traitor to a cause, for there are no causes here beyond self-perpetuation. He is simply a pragmatic player in a game where the only sin is to be on the outside, to be off the list, to be a “nobody.” He moves from one room in the great Nigerian political hotel to another, not because he believes in the new decor, but because the new room offers a better view and a minibar that never runs dry. Until we confront this fundamental truth – that we are operating a system that is democratic in form but profoundly authoritarian and oligarchic in substance – the carousel of defections will continue to spin. It is the logical, indeed the rational, outcome of a confused political universe where power is its own justification and survival is the only enduring ideology.
Interrogating the sinister machinery behind these defections is crucial to understanding the modern Nigerian political tragedy. It transforms from a drama of ambition into a thriller of coercion, where state institutions are weaponized to enforce loyalty.
If we require a living, breathing archetype of the survivalist politician, a case study in the art of perpetual realignment, we need look no further than Senator Orji Uzor Kalu. His political trajectory, a winding road from the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to his own Progressive Peoples Alliance (PPA) and finally to the All Progressives Congress (APC), reads less like a tale of conviction and more like a manual for navigating Nigeria’s turbulent political waters with one’s interests permanently afloat. His moves have never been guided by a discernible philosophy of governance, but by a relentless pursuit of proximity to power. In his own telling, Kalu frames his 2016 defection to the APC as a moment of brave sacrifice, recalling how he was mocked for being a lone voice from the South-East in a hostile party. However, this self-serving narrative of pioneering courage obscures a far more cynical pattern: Kalu has consistently attached his fortunes to whichever political vehicle appears most likely to reach the destination of federal influence and personal relevance. His political compass does not point to any ideological north; its needle spins wildly, forever seeking the magnetic pull of central authority.
The profound irony, which seems utterly lost on the Senator, is that his recent pontifications – claiming the APC does not need defections to win in 2027 – are made from a platform he himself accessed through the very same door he now pretends to disdain. His rise within the APC was not built on a foundation of ideological consistency or grassroots mobilization, but on a classic, calculated repositioning. He is the embodiment of the system critiquing its own reflection, a man who has built a career on shifting sands now preaching the gospel of stable foundations. This is not just hypocrisy; it is the operational logic of Nigerian politics laid bare. As I have long argued, our system does not punish inconsistency; it rewards it. It does not value loyalty; it exploits it. Kalu’s brand of politics is the ultimate proof of this perverse incentive structure. He is the leopard who changes his colours not because the hunt demands a new strategy, but because the camouflage of the day guarantees survival in a jungle where principles are a liability. His ideology is neither left nor right; it is the relentless, singular pursuit of self-preservation. And in the Nigerian political ecosystem, this is the only ideology that not only survives but thrives.
Political scientists like Wale Adebanwi would classify Kalu as a classic example of the “political entrepreneur,” a figure for whom “the party platform is a bus; you ride it until it reaches your stop, then you get off and find another going in your direction.” This is not politics as a contest of ideas, but as a series of strategic mergers and acquisitions. My own view is that Kalu’s longevity is a damning indictment of our collective memory and our electoral accountability mechanisms. A politician who can seamlessly transition from founding a party ostensibly to give his people a voice (PPA), to joining the very national structure that has systematically marginalized those same people, demonstrates that the electorate is often not a constituency to be served, but an asset to be managed and periodically leveraged. His career is a masterclass in the art of defection as a political strategy, proving that in Nigeria, the only truly unforgivable sin in politics is not betrayal, but irrelevance. He has mastered the dance of the carousel, knowing exactly when to jump from one horse to another to maintain his place in the dizzying spin, all while pretending to be the ringmaster.
The common, sanitized narrative of “political realignment” masks a coercive reality where state institutions are weaponized to enforce loyalty. The trajectory of high-profile figures like Senate President Godswill Akpabio from Akwa Ibom, or the political godfather Chimaroke Nnamani in Enugu, follows a pattern devoid of ideological pilgrimage and more of strategic survival. The unspoken motive is to secure a shield from accountability. By crossing to the ruling party, a politician gains protection from the very institutions designed to hold them accountable, transforming potential inmates into untouchable allies. This is where the analysis must descend into the darker underbelly, to the role of the secret police – the Department of State Services (DSS). They are the modern-day henchmen doing the hatchet job. Their vast domestic intelligence apparatus is deployed to gather compromising information – the “dirt” on financial malfeasance, corruption, and other crimes – on behalf of the central power. This information is then leveraged to make a politician an offer they cannot refuse: defect and enjoy the protection of the ruling party, or remain in opposition and face the full, unmitigated force of the law. It is a form of political blackmail, institutionalized at the highest level, ensuring dominance not through superior ideas but through the coercive power of the state.
Yet, even within this grim theatre of coercion, a more intricate and brutal drama unfolds – a play within a play, where the incoming defector must first prove his worth by performing a ritual sacrifice. Over the past few months, this unmistakable script has been playing out with chilling precision in Enugu State, and it is a pure, unvarnished story about power – skewed power and the struggle to the death for its control. To the untutored eye, the recent scandal that forced the resignation of the Minister of Innovation, Science, and Technology, Geoffrey Nnaji, was a straightforward case of certificate forgery. But this is a profound misreading of the scene. The scandal was not the cause but the consequence; not a spontaneous discovery of wrongdoing, but one of the key, non-negotiable demands laid on the table. For Governor Peter Mbah to join the APC and deliver the entire PDP structure of Enugu State – a prize of immeasurable value – he could not arrive as a mere supplicant. He demanded to enter as the undisputed party leader, the new alpha in the political jungle. This required the clearing of the existing hierarchy. Nnaji, as the sitting Minister and a key figure with his own structures within the APC in the state, represented an obstacle. His head, delivered on a platter, was the entrance fee and the proof of Mbah’s dominance and utility to the powers at the center.
The breathtaking hypocrisy and moral bankruptcy of this transaction are what truly define the Nigerian political machine. Here, the identical crime – certificate forgery, an allegation that has also dogged Governor Mbah regarding his NYSC discharge certificate – receives diametrically opposite judgments. Nnaji is forced to fall, while Mbah is not just forgiven but elevated. Why? The calculus is brutally pragmatic, stripped of any pretense to justice. Mbah is simply bringing more to the table than Nnaji could ever afford. He offers an entire state machinery, a governorship seat, and a vast political structure – assets that far outweigh the value of a single ministerial portfolio. In the dog-eat-dog arena of Nigerian politics, utility trumps integrity, and scale of influence determines the degree of immunity. This is the raw, unmediated truth of our system: what is condemned as a crime in one man is merely a negotiating chip for another. The goal is not to purge the system of forgers, but to ensure that the most valuable forgers are on your side. The shadow of 2027 looms over this entire maneuver; it is a long-game strategy to consolidate the South-East, neutralize internal opposition, and present a unified front for the next presidential election. So much is wrong with a nation where the wheels of justice are not merely slow but are deliberately steered to crush the dispensable and clear the path for the powerful, all in the name of political realignment.
This dance is enabled by a constitutional minuet, a legalistic loophole that makes a mockery of the democratic mandate. The 1999 Constitution, in Sections 68(1)(g) and 109(1)(g), states that legislators shall vacate their seats if they join another party without a division in their original party. Yet, as analyst Tonnie Iredia notes, these provisions “have been adhered to more in the breach.” For governors and the president, the restraint is even more illusory. They conveniently invoke Section 40’s guarantee of freedom of association, but this is a profound misrepresentation. The votes that elevated them to office belong constitutionally to the political party that sponsored them, not to them as individuals. A candidate without a party is nothing, as Sections 177(c) and 182(1)(a) make clear. To defect is to essentially appropriate the votes of Party Y and donate them to Party Z, a political heist that would be criminal in any other context or country. The judiciary, through contradictory rulings, has enabled this charade, creating a legal limbo where defection carries no consequence, thereby encouraging the “gale of defections” that now threatens to push us toward a de facto one-party state, a reality indistinguishable from the military rule we supposedly rejected decades ago.
Nowhere is the tragedy of this carousel more acutely felt than in the South-East, my own core constituency, where the phenomenon has systematically diluted our regional bargaining power while our developmental challenges fester. Since 1999, this region has been a revolving door of defections, each one sold as a breakthrough, yet none delivering the promised transformation. Our political class has mastered the art of switching allegiances, but our people remain stuck – economically marginalized, politically fractured, and developmentally stagnant. In Enugu, Governor Peter Mbah’s recent defection was framed as “political courage,” yet it mirrors the oldest pattern in the book: alignment with the center for protection, not progress. The PDP cried coercion and blackmail; the people cried betrayal. And why not? The roads remain broken, unemployment persists, and insecurity festers. In Abia, defections have surged amid trumped up dissatisfaction with the current administration, not based on ideological conviction but on the perceived access to federal patronage and protection. Despite the grand promises of reform and infrastructure, the state’s core challenges – poor roads, weak institutions, and youth unemployment – stubbornly unresolved under previous governments, and purposefully tackled by the present government, still do not seem enough for the naysayers. In Anambra, the defection drama plays out against a backdrop of sheer violence, with 14 political assassinations recorded between 2022 and 2024, alongside cult killings and attacks on INEC facilities. These are not mere symptoms of insecurity; they are the direct consequences of a political instability fueled by the constant, opportunistic shifting of loyalties. The people of the South-East are no longer asking who will defect next; they are asking when. And they already know the answer. What they don’t know is when this cycle will end, when the political elite will finally prioritize regional development over personal advancement.
This constant recourse of defection is not an abstract theory; it is a lived reality with concrete, devastating consequences for the millions of Nigerians watching the political circus from the crumbling stands of their daily lives. The recent defection in Delta encapsulates the utter divorce between political theater and tangible progress. Just a few months ago, the political landscape witnessed a spectacle of almost surreal proportions: the immediate past Governor of Delta State, who had just months prior run as the running mate to Atiku Abubakar in a fiercely contested presidential election against Bola Tinubu, executed a perfect political somersault. Not only did he cross over to the APC, but he was joined by the current sitting Governor and the entire PDP structure in the state. It was a wholesale transfer of allegiance, a political heist of an entire state’s opposition apparatus, presented in the press as a masterstroke of “strategic realignment.” The headlines celebrated the consolidation of power, the brilliance of political strategy, and the death of opposition in the region. But on the ground, in the lived experience of the people of Delta, a simple, damning question echoes: What has been achieved since that move?
The answer is written not in press statements but in the brutal topography of the state itself. The Delta roads, long a symbol of governmental neglect, have descended into even more deplorable states of disrepair, becoming treacherous rivers of mud during the rainy season and dust-choked tracks in the dry. Salaries for civil servants remain unpaid for months, paralyzing families and local economies. The disconnect between the people and their government has not been bridged by this political migration; it has widened into a canyon of cynicism and despair. As I argued in my essay, “The Crumbling Highways of Delta and the Corridors of Power”, this defection “mirrors a broader political circus.” For the citizens, the spectacle reeks not of strategy but of opportunism. A mechanic in Asaba, his workshop stranded by an impassable road, spat the truth with raw clarity: “They’re jumping parties like frogs, but our roads still drown in the rainy season.” This is the definitive verdict on the entire enterprise.
Beneath this surface-level spectacle of jumping frogs lies a chilling pattern of systemic plunder that the defection serves to camouflage. Investigations reveal a rot so deep it has become structural. Budgets earmarked for infrastructure, the very lifeblood of development, vanish into the opaque void of unaccountable contracts. In 2021, for instance, the state allocated a colossal ₦78 billion for road rehabilitation. Yet, two years later, auditors discovered that a mere 12% of the projects had been completed, with a staggering ₦34 billion unaccounted for – a black hole of public funds large enough to have tarmacked every major artery in the state. The trail of this disappearance, according to documents leaked to the press, leads directly to contractors linked to the governor’s inner circle, awarded lucrative deals without any pretense of competitive bidding. When confronted with this audacious diversion of public wealth, the official response from the Commissioner for Works was a masterpiece of bureaucratic nihilism: a shrug encapsulated in the words, “Due process was followed.” This phrase has become the universal incantation of the Nigerian political class, a magical spell intended to dissolve accountability into thin air. The defection to the ruling party, in this light, is not merely a political calculation; it is the final act of insulation. It is the moving of the loot from a potentially contested bank to the central vault, where the ruling party’s umbrella guarantees that no audit, no inquiry, and no prosecution will ever threaten the spoils of this grand theft.
Thus, the journey of the Delta State political machine – from opposition stalwarts to ruling party acolytes – is the ultimate proof of concept for Nigeria’s unique political model. It demonstrates that the system is not designed to produce outcomes like roads, salaries, or development. It is engineered for a single, overarching purpose: the perpetual consolidation of power for the purpose of self-enrichment. The governorship, the political structure, the very will of the people as expressed (or stolen) at the ballot box, are all reduced to transferable assets, commodities to be traded at the federal bazaar in exchange for protection and continued access to the treasury. The crumbling highways of Delta are not a failure of the system; they are its logical output. They are the physical manifestation of a political philosophy that views public service as an inconvenient byproduct of the real business of accumulation. The defection is the ceremonial flag planted on this conquered territory, a signal to the other players in the game that the region has been successfully pacified, not for the people, but for the perpetuation of the very cycle that immiserates them. In the end, the frogs jump, the circus packs up and moves to the next town, and the people are left, knee-deep in the mud, wondering when the performance will ever end and the governance will begin.
Beneath the political theatre lies a stark economic calculus, where defections function as strategic moves in a high-stakes game of resource allocation and personal enrichment. This is rational choice theory at its most perverse – where actors systematically pursue personal gain at the expense of the public good. The economic consequences are multidimensional and devastating. First, policy disruption becomes inevitable; long-term development plans are abandoned or rebranded, state budgets and infrastructure projects are stalled or redirected, wasting public funds and delaying progress indefinitely. Second, resource misallocation occurs on a grand scale, as defectors are rewarded with appointments, contracts, or campaign funding, distorting the entire system away from merit and toward corrupt patronage. Perhaps most damaging is the investor uncertainty generated by this perpetual motion. Political stability is the bedrock of economic development, and the constant reshuffling of political allegiances signals profound instability, discouraging the foreign direct investment that craves a predictable policy environment. This economic fragmentation impedes every coordinated reform – from tax harmonization to subsidy removal – all of which require sustained, unified legislative support across electoral cycles.
This relentless cycle of coercion and transactional defection begs a more fundamental question about the very character of the Nigerian political actor. It is often said, with a grim, knowing resignation, that “only the worst of us join the police.” This cynical observation finds its perfect parallel in the political arena. Politics in Nigeria has become a magnet for all the wrong eggs, a profession that actively repels the virtuous and rewards the vicious. The system is not merely broken; it is actively curated to select for the most avaricious, the most ruthless, and the most morally flexible. The idealist, the technocrat, the public servant – these figures are either systematically ejected or, more tragically, absorbed and transformed by the endemic rot. The Nigerian political space is not just a playing field; it is a petri dish breeding disease-carrying vectors. Once bitten by the bug of power, you simply turn. The Portuguese phrase “Boco e a Zombie” captures this terrifying metamorphosis with uncanny accuracy. They become part of the horde, losing any prior identity or principle, driven by a single, insatiable hunger for self-perpetuation, acting just like those who came before them.
It brings to mind the haunting lyrics of the Eagles’ “Hotel California”: “You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave.” This is the ultimate metaphor for the Nigerian political labyrinth. One enters the hotel with grand ambitions of change, seduced by its glittering facade of influence and opportunity. But once inside, the environment works its corruption. The corridors of power are lined with mirrors that reflect not your original self, but the distorted image of the very people you sought to replace. The system is designed to addict its inhabitants to the narcotics of patronage, privilege, and impunity. Look across the political landscape: can we point to a single individual who entered the fray with a spark of truth and focus, served their term, and then calmly returned to their former profession – be it law, medicine, engineering, or academia? The resounding, deafening silence is the answer. They never leave the hotel because, for the vast majority, they had no substantial profession to return to in the first place. Politics was never a calling; it was the only lottery ticket, the sole viable enterprise. For them, government is not a means to an end for public good; it is the end itself – the only business in town.
If any single, recent event captures the brutal choreography of Nigeria’s defection drama, it is the spectacle that unfolded in Enugu State on Tuesday, October 14, 2025. On this day, Governor Peter Mbah, who had ridden the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to power, officially announced his defection to the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) in a state-wide broadcast and press conference. His speech, grandly titled “Charting a New Course,” was a masterclass in the political rhetoric I have tried to deconstruct – a performance of “difficult, even painful decisions” meant to cloak a raw, strategic calculus in the language of high principle. He declared a “break from the past,” framing his move as a necessary step to connect Enugu State more directly with the central government of President Bola Tinubu, whom he effusively praised as a “partner in purpose”. The stated reasons were a familiar playlist: a professed need to secure more federal benefits for his state and the grievance that the South-East’s voice was “too often disregarded” within the PDP, a party the region had loyally supported for nearly three decades. He insisted this was not a “betrayal” but a migration to a “stronger platform” to better serve the people’s mandate. However, viewed through the analytical framework of this essay, this is not a break from the past but a perfect enactment of it. This is not a migration; it is a calculated merger, the very “intimate intercourse” of a system that values power over people.
The choreography of the event was as significant as the announcement itself, demonstrating the coercive collectivism that underpins these moves. This was no solitary leap of conscience. Governor Mbah was joined in his defection by a veritable army of the state’s political apparatus: his immediate predecessor, Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi; members of the National and State Assemblies; the entire State Executive Council; all local government chairmen and councillors; and over 80% of the PDP executives in the state. This wholesale transfer of allegiance, presented as a “collective move by the political family in Enugu State,” is the political equivalent of a hostile takeover. It reveals the defection not as an ideological shift but as a cold, strategic consolidation of power, ensuring the governor arrives at the APC’s doorstep not as a mere supplicant, but as a regional chieftain delivering an entire political structure – a prized asset in the run-up to the 2027 elections. The formal presentation of his APC membership card by the party’s National Working Committee was the ceremonial stamp on this transaction, marking the successful capture of a former PDP stronghold .
This reality creates a self-perpetuating, closed ecosystem of ambition without skill and power without purpose. When a person’s entire socioeconomic existence is predicated on holding a political office, the stakes are no longer about service but about survival. Losing an election or finishing a term is not a transition; it is an existential threat. This is the engine that drives the desperate, unprincipled defections. It explains why a senator would rather switch parties and betray his constituents than risk a future outside the hallowed halls of the National Assembly. It is why a governor will trade the entire political legacy of his state for the promise of a “soft landing” and a continued presence at the table when his tenure ends. They are not public servants on a career path; they are occupants fighting to avoid eviction from the only home they have. The defection, then, is the master key they are given to unlock a new room in the same hotel, ensuring they never have to face the cold reality of the world outside. And so the carousel spins, manned by those who cannot and will not get off, trapping the entire nation in their endless, meaningless dance.
This brings us to the haunting, central questions: Why defect if you have nothing to fear? Why defect if, in the first place, you joined politics for a purpose and possessed a clear ideology? Do leopards change their colours when the hunt becomes difficult? These questions are not merely rhetorical; they are indictments that expose the moral bankruptcy at the heart of the enterprise. In a system where ideology is fluid and accountability is elusive, defection becomes a tool for evasion, not evolution. The leopard metaphor is apt. In nature, a leopard adapts its strategy, not its spots. But in Nigeria’s political jungle, the predators change colours to blend with new power structures, abandoning old alliances and principles with an ease that is breathtaking. This chameleon-like behaviour represents the survival of the most flexible, not the fittest. Defections thus perpetuate a cycle of impunity, as politicians under investigation often find a safe harbour in the ruling party, where corruption cases are quietly dropped or indefinitely delayed. This pattern erodes the last vestiges of trust in our institutions and reinforces the poisonous belief that justice is negotiable, that loyalty to power trumps accountability to the people.
This reality creates a self-perpetuating, closed ecosystem of ambition without skill and power without purpose. When a person’s entire socioeconomic existence is predicated on holding a political office, the stakes are no longer about service but about survival. Losing an election or finishing a term is not a transition; it is an existential threat. This is the engine that drives the desperate, unprincipled defections. It explains why a senator would rather switch parties and betray his constituents than risk a future outside the hallowed halls of the National Assembly. It is why a governor will trade the entire political legacy of his state for the promise of a “soft landing” and a continued presence at the table when his tenure ends. They are not public servants; they are occupants fighting to avoid eviction from the only home they have. The defection, then, is the master key they are given to unlock a new room in the same hotel, ensuring they never have to face the cold reality of the world outside.
And what does that cold reality look like? It is a scene of profound, public oblivion that I witnessed firsthand a few years ago at a meeting of Ohanaeze Ndigbo at the Nike Lake Hotel in Enugu. The protocol was standard: names were listed, accommodations assigned. Upon arrival, you identified yourself at the front desk and were allocated a room. There, standing before I came, looking utterly subdued and a sorry cut of his former self, was His Excellency, Chief Achike Udenwa, a former Governor of Imo State. He was being spoken to indifferently, looked down upon, and finally told the three most devastating words a former big man can hear: “You are not on the list.” He begged, he asked for a room, his voice stripped of the authority it once commanded. I approached him, greeted him, and said, “Your Excellency, what’s the problem?” That simple act of recognition, of using his former title, brought a fleeting measure of relief to his face. But it did not change his material circumstances immediately. Though the matter was later resolved, it stuck with me. No one else recognised him. No one else cared. His fortune had fallen down the ladder, and at that moment, he was a political nobody.
This is the visceral, morbid fear that haunts every Nigerian politician – the terror of becoming a spectral figure, a “former” who is no longer recognised, no longer noticed, no longer on the list. This fear is the silent drumbeat to which the entire dance of defection marches. It is the clue to understanding why they spend their time stealing and not serving; they are building a financial war chest not for retirement, but for perpetual relevance. They are funding a lifelong campaign to never, ever be in the position of Achike Udenwa at that front desk. I run into many of these “former” politicians – and one must ask, in Nigeria, is there truly anything like that? They were, in no distant past, so highly intoxicated by the blitz and glitz of power, living for nothing other than the high of the moment. Today, they are nothing. Just nothing. And this is the precise, psychological impetus behind the desperate need to shift ground, to jump ship mid-term, and to create all the noisy gragra about projects for the people. The performance is not for the electorate; it is an audition for the central power brokers, a desperate plea to remain on the list, to keep a room key in hand, and to avoid the terrifying silence that comes when the music of power finally stops.
Mbah’s defection, following the identical script recently enacted by the governors of Delta and Akwa Ibom, proves that the carousel spins faster as the next election cycle approaches. The lofty promises of “disruptive transformation” and “visionary partnership” ring hollow when the immediate outcome is not a flurry of new projects for the people of Enugu, but the mere realignment of their governor’s political affiliations for survival and relevance. It is the fear of the “nobody” – the haunting specter of former Governor Achike Udenwa being told “you are not on the list” – that drives these men to move en masse to the ruling party. They are not seeking a platform to serve; they are seeking a shelter to survive, a room in the “Hotel California” of Nigerian politics, where they can check out any time they like, but, God forbid, they can never leave.
The most insidious consequence of this endless circuit may be its gradual erosion of democratic pluralism itself. The “gale of defections,” as it has been rightly called, has left opposition parties severely fractured and in a state of disarray. This is dangerous because opposition parties are the indispensable watchdogs in any mature democracy, providing citizens with a viable alternative when the ruling party fails. In Nigeria, however, politicians see parties not as vessels of ideology but as mere vehicles to ascend to power, and even in power, they view politics as a gravy train for wealth accumulation, rather than an avenue for service delivery. This stands in sharp contrast to developed democracies where political parties and politicians are ideologically grounded. The result is a cynical, heartbreaking reality for the electorate: to trust Nigerian politicians is at your own peril. They do not have an iota of shame. They will blame and chide a political party and defect to it the next day. The constant migration to the ruling party creates a dangerous predominance that suffocates dissent and mimics the one-party states we have historically criticized elsewhere.
So, where does this leave us? We are at the edge of another wave. It is no longer a question of who will defect, but when. More will shift grounds. More will recite the same tired lines about “bringing development” and “aligning with the center.” But we have all seen this movie before, and it always ends with the same credits: broken promises, deepened poverty, and a widening chasm between the governed and those who govern. The people stay put, trapped in their suffering, while the politicians dance. The suffering – the poverty, the insecurity, the unemployment – does not switch parties; it only deepens. The electorate watches a captive audience to a performance they did not commission, as their supposed representatives leap from one platform to another, not to serve but to survive. The disconnect is the story of our nation: those in power move freely; those without it remain stuck.
Breaking this cycle requires a courage we have yet to muster – a commitment to structural reform that confronts the root causes, not just the symptoms. First, we must pursue genuine electoral reform that closes the constitutional loopholes. The vague “division” clause must be clearly defined, and seat forfeiture must be enforced for any defection without a genuine, proven ideological justification. Second, we must build ideologically coherent parties with internal democracy and transparent funding, so they become more than mere vehicles for personal ambition. Parties must ensure that nominations are based on merit, not patronage, and establish robust mechanisms for addressing internal grievances. Third, a renewed civic education must empower voters to see through the theatre and demand accountability. The electorate must recognize that every defection without principle is a theft of their mandate, a betrayal of their trust. Finally, the judiciary must find the courage in its constitutional interpretation, recognizing that while it may not remove a defecting governor, it can and must decline to validate the act of dispossessing a party of its votes. If politicians find they cannot legally defect to other parties while holding onto the votes of a different party to sustain themselves in office, perhaps only then will the music stop.
And so, after the press conferences fade and the headlines change, after the governors have been welcomed and the party flags exchanged, the people are left with the tangible residue of these high-political dramas: the same cratered roads, the same ghostly schools, the same hunger that gnaws behind closed doors. It is in this space of betrayed expectations that the most accurate political science emerges, not from the ivory towers of academia, but from the gutters of lived experience. A man I met on the street, his frustration having boiled over into crystalline clarity, once offered this indelible diagnosis: “Oga, our politics na ashawo. Our politicians na ashawo. Even ashawo better pass dem.” This statement, which could have come from any one of us, does not merely capture the issue; it eviscerates it, cutting through the layers of legal justification and strategic framing to reveal the rotten core. The professional sex worker, in this brutal analogy, operates with a codex more honorable than the Nigerian political class. She stands for something – a transparent, if grim, transaction. She names her price, delivers a service, and the contract is clear. There is an integrity in this honesty, a perverse consistency in the exchange. Her identity is not a lie; her profession is her profession.
Our politicians, by stark contrast, stand for nothing but the eternal pursuit of the next client. They are the ultimate political prostitutes, but without the sex worker’s code. They pledge lifelong loyalty to a party’s ideology during the campaign, only to renounce it at the first sight of a better offer from the highest bidder. They swear oaths on the bible and the Quran to serve the people, then systematically auction the people’s resources and mandate to the central bank of power. The “ashawo” has a fixed location, a known identity; our politicians are shape-shifters, their principles as fluid as their party affiliations. The defection, then, is not a moment of profound political recalculus; it is simply the act of moving from one street corner to another where the traffic of federal patronage is heavier, the clients are richer, and the protection from the law is guaranteed. This is why the man on the street insists the “ashawo better pass dem.” At least she does not pretend her transaction is a holy communion. At least she does not dress her pursuit of income in the sacred vestments of national destiny and service to the fatherland. She is honest in her dishonor, while our politicians are profoundly dishonest in theirs, cloaking their venal trade in the language of courage, realignment, and the people’s interest. This pervasive, deeply understood truth is the final verdict on the defection carousel – it is not politics, but a form of grand-scale prostitution where the entire nation is the unwilling john, forced to pay for a service never rendered, in a transaction that never ends.
This foundational dishonesty, this complete divorce between word and deed, is the toxin that poisons our democratic potential. When a political class operates with less integrity than society’s most stigmatized figures, it does not merely fail to govern; it actively dismantles the very idea of moral community, of public trust, of a shared future. It reduces the noble concept of governance to a series of grubby, backroom transactions, leaving the citizenry not just impoverished, but spiritually bereft, convinced that no one in power stands for anything at all.
In the final analysis, defections in Nigeria are the ultimate metaphor for a system that values optics over outcomes, motion over meaning. They are the political equivalent of changing costumes in a play whose tragic ending is already written – the perpetual consolidation of elite interests at the expense of national development. They are dazzling distractions in a democracy still searching for its soul, a carousel that spins with impressive energy but goes absolutely nowhere. Until we rewrite the script itself – through unyielding reform, the rediscovery of ideology, and an unwavering demand for accountability – this theatre of the absurd will continue its run, with the people of Nigeria playing the role of the disappointed, yet resilient, audience.
