Election without political parties: outlook towards 2027, by Usman Sarki

“Political parties created democracy, and modern democracy is unthinkable save in terms of the parties.” — E. E. Schattschneider

I sometimes wonder if Schattschneider would review his opinion on the centrality of political parties in a democratic dispensation if he had anticipated the situation in Nigeria today. In 2022, I was invited to serve as Senior Special Adviser on Policy and Strategy to the then National Chairman of the All Progressives Congress, APC. In that capacity, I had the privilege of observing the party from close quarters as we prepared for and conducted the 2023 general elections, from which its presidential candidate emerged victorious. Looking back to that period and at Nigeria’s political terrain today as we approach another general election, I sometimes find it difficult to recognise the APC as I knew it then. The same uncertainty applies, perhaps even more profoundly, to the various opposition parties and their viability as coherent political organisations. Perhaps Nigeria is gradually introducing another form of democracy to the world: democracy in which political parties exist everywhere in law and symbolism, but are increasingly absent as meaningful institutions of political mobilisation.

To all intents and purposes, the 2027 elections may be conducted without the centrality of political parties as the bedrock of the democratic order. This may sound contradictory because Nigeria remains constitutionally a party-based democracy. Candidates must be sponsored by political parties, primaries provide the recognised means of nomination, party symbols will appear on ballot papers and party agents will populate polling units. INEC’s timetable itself places parties at the centre of candidate nomination and electoral participation. There is, however, an important distinction between the legal existence of parties and their political relevance as institutions of electoral democracy. What appears to be emerging is not literally an election without political parties, but an electoral contest in which party identity is being overshadowed by personalities, governors, ministers, political financiers, religious influencers, regional calculations, incumbency and informal coalitions assembled principally to capture electoral advantage.

Political parties ordinarily perform these indispensable democratic functions. They aggregate interests, formulate policies, recruit leaders, produce manifestos, educate voters and present identifiable alternatives. A party is supposed to represent something recognisable and reasonably enduring beyond the ambition of the individual seeking office under its banner. When those distinctions disappear, parties become little more than vehicles of noisemaking and convenience. Nigeria has been travelling in this direction for some time. Politicians move remarkably easily from one party to another, frequently without any corresponding alteration in philosophy, policy or worldview. Yesterday’s adversary becomes today’s indispensable ally. A politician who previously condemned a party as incapable of governing may subsequently join it and become one of its loudest defenders. Another occupying a commanding position in government may move to the opposition and immediately embrace propositions he previously opposed.

One is therefore compelled to ask: if political convictions can be transferred so effortlessly from one platform to another, what exactly do the parties stand for? The approach to 2027 makes this question especially important because neither the opposition nor the governing party appears completely settled within the traditional logic of party organisation. The opposition coalition appears uncertain in its composition, leadership, programme and capacity to reconcile competing personal ambitions. The basic proposition behind opposition cooperation is understandable. Disparate political forces may legitimately seek common ground against an incumbent government. Coalition politics occurs in democracies everywhere. The difficulty begins when personalities precede or supersede programmes.

Where a coalition rests upon shared ideas and an agreed programme of government, the identity of its eventual candidate, however important, should remain subordinate to the larger political project. Where, conversely, personal ambitions and calculations of electoral advantage dominate, coalition-building becomes less about constructing an alternative government than about reconciling individual aspirations. The opposition can therefore find itself in the curious position of having many politicians interested in coalition-building without necessarily possessing a coherent coalition platform. But the governing APC seems to be confronting its own version of precisely the same problem. The controversy surrounding the so-called Rainbow Coalition associated with FCT Minister Nyesom Wike illustrates this phenomenon vividly. Wike has stated that the coalition is mobilising for President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s re-election rather than for the APC as an organisation. APC governors, conversely, have declared that they will not support arrangements capable of weakening their party or adversely affecting its candidates at other levels.

Whatever position one takes on that curious disagreement, its significance extends far beyond the personalities involved. It raises a fundamental question about the meaning of party loyalty itself. Ordinarily, support for the presidential candidate of a political party should form part of a broader commitment to that party’s fortunes. But Nigeria now appears capable of producing arrangements whereby individuals support the presidential candidate of one party while backing governorship or legislative candidates belonging to another. Where, then, are party affiliation, loyalty and supremacy? This is perhaps the central paradox of 2027. The opposition is searching for a coalition capable of transcending its constituent political parties, while the governing side is confronted by a coalition that could itself transcend the ruling party. On one side stands an opposition attempting to construct cooperation beyond existing party boundaries. On the other stands an incumbent president attracting support from politicians whose commitment to his candidacy does not necessarily extend to the entire APC platform that brought him into office in the first place.

Between them stands an electorate confronted increasingly not simply by parties, but by personalities, alliances, governors, ministers, religious leaders, praise singers, financiers, regional arrangements and competing political structures. The word “structure” has indeed become extraordinarily revealing in Nigerian politics. Discussion increasingly centres on who controls the structure in a state, who commands local government machinery, who influences delegates, who controls campaign financing, who can mobilise crowds and voters, and who possesses access to the institutional levers capable of shaping electoral outcomes.

Far less attention is devoted to what the political parties actually believe. Therein lies the danger. Strong democracies require strong political parties. Parties should not merely nominate candidates, print posters, organise rallies and disappear until the next election. They should be repositories of ideas capable of surviving individual leaders. Presidents should leave office without parties losing their identities. Governors should come and go while institutions endure. Internal democracy should allow members to influence policy and candidate selection rather than reducing entire parties to extensions of powerful personalities.

Nigeria once possessed parties with more discernible identities and characters. During the First Republic, the Northern People’s Congress, Action Group, National Council of Nigeria and the Cameroons and United Middle Belt Congress possessed identifiable constituencies, leadership traditions and political orientations. During the Second Republic, parties such as the NPN, UPN, NPP, PRP and GNPP similarly offered clearer political identities. The NRC and SDP of the aborted Third Republic represented another experiment in structured party competition. These arrangements should not be romanticised. Many were heavily regionalised, while ethnic and sectional divisions contributed to political instability. Nevertheless, voters could often associate parties with recognisable leadership, traditions, constituencies and programmes. Today, differentiation has become considerably more difficult. Defections reinforce this tendency. A politician may pass through several major parties while retaining substantially the same political worldview throughout. Perhaps the explanation is that his philosophy never belonged to any of those parties in the first place.

This has consequences for democratic accountability. In a functioning party system, voters can reward or punish a party for its record. Institutional memory develops. Manifestos acquire meaning because parties are expected to defend recognisable principles over time. But accountability becomes blurred when politicians repeatedly cross party boundaries or openly work for candidates outside their own platforms. What exactly is the voter endorsing: the politician, the party, the manifesto or merely the temporary coalition prevailing during that election? The personalisation of politics is particularly consequential in a presidential system. Presidential contests naturally concentrate attention upon individuals. Television, social media, rallies and personality-driven campaigning intensify that tendency until politics becomes increasingly presidentialised while parties themselves recede into the background. The danger, therefore, is not that political parties will literally disappear in 2027. They cannot easily do so because Nigerian electoral law continues to place them at the centre of nominations and candidate sponsorship.

The danger is subtler. Nigeria could arrive at an election in which political parties remain legally indispensable while becoming politically secondary. There will be party logos on ballot papers, flags at rallies, primaries, agents, offices, slogans and manifestos. But behind these formalities may stand political formations assembled primarily around individuals: temporary alliances of governors, financiers, religious vendors, regional brokers, political entrepreneurs and influential personalities negotiating across party boundaries.

This is why the expression “election without political parties” deserves consideration. The opposition appears to be struggling to build something larger than its constituent parties. The governing party, meanwhile, appears concerned that support for its presidential candidate could become detached from loyalty to the APC itself. Both tendencies point towards the same phenomenon: the fragmentation and weakening of the political party as the principal organising institution of democratic competition.

The decisive question approaching 2027 may therefore not simply be which party Nigerians will vote for. It may increasingly become whether Nigerians are voting for political parties at all. If personalities and temporary coalitions become the actual instruments of electoral mobilisation while parties merely provide the legal platforms upon which candidates’ names appear, Nigeria may enter 2027 with numerous political parties but considerably less genuine party politics. That would indeed be, in political rather than constitutional terms, an election without political parties.

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