By Olu Fasan
Ostensibly, Nigeria is a multi-party democracy. But in reality, it is a one-party state. Those ululating over the recent gale of defections wrongly assume that there are material differences between Nigerian political parties. Yet, in truth, the prevalence of defections, decamping, cross-carpeting, or name it, only proves that nothing distinguishes political parties in Nigeria.
Lord Palmerstone, a former British prime minister, famously coined the phrase “there are no permanent friends or permanent enemies but permanent interests” to describe relations between nations. However, Nigerian politicians have appropriated that saying and turned it into the leitmotif of their political culture. Indeed, Bola Tinubu used the phrase in 2014 when he and others were cobbling together the All Progressives Congress, APC, a potpourri of strange political bedfellows who were united merely by a self-serving agenda to seize and share power. “There are no permanent friends or enemies in politics, but permanent friends, ” Tinubu said, without any sense of irony. Politics in Nigeria is all about selfish interests.
