Political defections occur in many countries of the world. Donald Trump, the current president of the United States of America who is now a Republican was once a Democrat. Defection is therefore neither new nor restricted to Nigeria. Whereas it is not too difficult to appreciate the rationale for political defections in other climes, the nature and frequency of Nigeria’s unending carpet-crossing from one party to another has no doubt become worrisome.

Only last week, governor Sheriff Oborevwori of Delta State defected from his party, the People’s Democratic Party PDP with scores of associates to the ruling All Progressives Congress APC. His predecessor in office, Ifeanyi Okowa moved along with him thereby leaving the PDP in Delta State in a quagmire of confusion. 

 Bearing in mind that for some time now, materialistic political defections in Nigeria have become a common trend with their adverse effects on the nation’s democracy, many Nigerians have expressed deep concern over the situation. While some people think that the country should design a strategy for discouraging the trend, others think defection has the advantage of creating flexibility in the political system. There is indeed the argument that it can make political parties to be more conscious of the expedience of a better management of their organs and structures. But as a developing political system, whose democratic norms and ethos are yet to be institutionalized, there is ample wisdom in regulating political defections in Nigeria before they derail her fragile democracy.

  It is perhaps against this backdrop that our constitution places some restrictions on defections by legislators. According to Sections 68(1)(g) and 109(1)(g) “members of the National Assembly or a House of Assembly shall vacate their seat if they join another party or change their political party without the approval of their constituents or the party.” Sadly, these provisions have been adhered to more in the breach. In the case of the executive, the same limitation is absent from the constitution making it appear that presidents and governors are free to defect from their political parties whenever they so wish. As if to further throw some light on this viewpoint, it has been argued that the freedom of association guaranteed under Section 40 of the constitution covers the field.

 I disagree with the argument that a president or governor can under the guise of freedom of association be free to defect from his party to another. My position is that such supposedly free movement can have its minuses for society. To start with, the movement ought not to be allowed if the person moving is taking along with him to his new location, a property which belongs to someone else. Put differently, an elected office-holder under the banner of party Y cannot validly move to party Z with votes that belong to his previous party. To accept that is to allow the imposition on an electorate of a political party that had earlier been rejected during polls. It is worse that the party is now essentially the custodian of stolen goods.

  Those who argue that votes belong to a candidate are certainly not correct especially in the Nigerian context in which there are no independent candidates; it is political parties and not individuals that win elections. I had previously disagreed with the position of some analysts that former governors Ben Ayade of Cross River State and Dave Umahi of Ebonyi State were free to defect to the APC from the PDP. The attempt to sack the two governors failed because the judiciary was unable to find a place in our constitution, where the punishment for defection is to remove the defecting governor from office. I want to believe that the verdict would have been different if the party had simply sought to nullify the defection because the defecting governor has no right to so mischievously use the party’s vote.

 I do not believe that our courts would have found it hard to accept that the votes which enabled the two defendants to become governors belonged as a matter of fact to the PDP. Instead, the courts would have agreed with the clear provisions of Sections 177(c) and 182(1)(a) that “a candidate for governorship or presidency must be sponsored by a political party.” In which case, without a party a candidate is nothing. It stands to reason therefore that a governor cannot appropriate the votes of party Y and donate them to party Z. Indeed, whereas the judiciary should decline to remove a governor from office for defecting from one party to the other, it should also decline to validate the act of dispossessing a party of its votes. 

Political parties should therefore recraft their prayers and stop asking for the removal of a defecting governor as can be done to a defecting legislator. Accordingly, it would be unwise to ask the judiciary to remove defecting governor Sheriff Oborevwori of Delta State from office. He should neither be removed from office nor be allowed to defect. If governors find that they cannot legally defect to other parties while holding-on to the votes of a different party to sustain themselves in office, it would be left with those of them who so much love their new parties to first resign before defecting or to abandon the desire to defect. The judiciary can consider this suggestion while interpreting our defection laws with a view to helping Nigeria to strengthen its democracy. 

On the other hand, to consider the argument that candidates are co-owners of votes with their parties would amount to giving defectors loopholes to further experiment with our political system. This is because even if they were to be seen as co-owners, they cannot validly dispossess the party which is clearly the originating main shareholder. One reason why defectors are always left off the hook is the fact that their parties hardly keep to the issue at stake. It is therefore hoped that the PDP would concentrate on its loss of the governorship of Delta State rather than bothering itself with irrelevant moral issues that are purely a distraction. For example, a case against former governor Okowa is unnecessary. 

At this point, Okowa holds no office under the banner of the PDP. His case is therefore one that is covered by the principle of the freedom of association. His previous position as running mate to the party’s candidate during the 2023 election is now redundant and cannot bind him to the party for forever. It would be the party’s undoing to allow any focus on Okowa and others to distract them from the main goal. All opposition parties should therefore stand firmly to object to any of its governors defecting. Here, the case which stands out is that of governor Umo Eno of Akwa Ibom State who has become the most visible of all opposition governors with a body language that is currently singing the anthem of the ruling party. They need to reach him now before he holds more rallies to use his analogy of Ibom air flight to escape. 

Eno can even imagine that he got the mandate of his people to defect through his analogy of flying in an aircraft that is set to board instead of his own that is reportedly under repairs. The problem with his analogy is that his original aircraft may never be fit to fly, because he and the entire government apparatus, its most priced passengers may have departed with an alternative flight. The greater danger is that the competitor may easily acquire the entire company of the airline in the belief that the company had liquidated. This would be most unfair to the original owners of the company who are known in history to have consistently rejected other companies. This is why the sellers and the buyers need to respect the wishes of the founding fathers of the company.

But analogies aside, the political party of a governor hardly matters as there is no evidence that any governor would govern better simply because he defected to the ruling party. In fact, the best governors today are by no means those elected under the banner of the APC. What Nigerians want is good governance; not governors of a particular party. The last time I visited Delta State, there were visible signs of gigantic and exciting projects which should be sustained rather than defections which blow cosmetic matters out of proportion. Nigerians must thus stand together to reject defections which add zero value to society. Otherwise, the trend of our gale of defections may push Nigeria to a one-party state which is the same as military rule that Nigerians rejected more than two decades ago. Stopping the defections is therefore long overdue.