Кризис партийной системы: автор предупреждает о рисках для демократии в Нигерии и мире

Jide Osuntokun Follow Us on Google August 27, 2026 by Jide Osuntokun Political parties in modern democratic governance Winston Churchill, the great British Second World War leader was at heart not a doctrinaire democrat and was not ready to grant democratic rights of self-government to non-white member nations of the empire by declaring that he was not “elected to preside over the liquidation of the British empire”. Traditional politicians in Great Britain had for hundreds of years believed in parliamentary democracy based on political parties. When I was in the University of Ibadan offering political science as my subsidiary subject to my honours history course, I was taught that well organized political parties were a fundamental requirement of democracy. Our department of political science was staffed mostly by American academics and a few Nigerians. I remember in particular Professor Richard Sklar, a brilliant scholar who was very knowledgeable about Nigerian political parties and who later wrote a good book titled Nigerian Political Parties, which was a required reading for students and presumably politicians of that era. There were very few British lecturers in the faculty of social science as a whole. The British then apparently did not think social science encompassing of Economics, Sociology, Anthropology and Political Science were worthy of much academic enquiry. Teaching of it was then left in the hands of the Americans, and an Irish Jesuit by the name of Father James O’Connell and American educated-Essien Udom who by general acclamation was a poor teacher despite his apparent scholarship as an author of an iconic book on the Black Muslims of America: A study in Black Nationalism. This book was later eclipsed by the autobiography (as told to Alex Hailey) of Malcolm X (Al – hajj Malik el Shabazz). Most of the staff in other departments and faculties as a whole came from Great Britain itself, Canada, Republic of South Africa, New Zealand, Australia and the non-Commonwealth countries but English speaking United States. It was established then that what distinguished British political parties and those from Commonwealth countries generally from their American counterparts was their rigid organization as distinct from the American type of political parties which were electoral contraptions put together by pressure groups and people with special interests to win elections after which they shared political offices in government, agencies and Congress and even the judiciary. The British who were the colonial rulers of Nigeria had a dim view of American politics and even the discipline of political science. It may interest readers that Nnamdi Azikiwe could not find a teaching job in Nigeria when he returned home to Nigeria in 1933 with a Master of Science degree in Political Science from the Ivy League University of Philadelphia in Pennsylvania. Permit my long preamble, and now back to the issue of political parties. Professor Sklar was an admirer of the British political tradition of strong political parties as a requirement for functioning modern democratic governance which he saw as a fundamental difference between the British democratic practice and that of America. He rightly admired the strength of British parties with their centuries of history behind them rather than the contraptions of interest and pressure groups in the United States to run for power. This seems to be borne out by the current situation of political parties in America where parties are virtually devoid of ideological differentiation. The current Republican Party has been reduced to a one man show grovelling at the feet of Donald J. Trump and following whatever Trump says at any given time. The current Democratic Party is almost unrecognizable from the Democratic Party of J. F. Kennedy – Lyndon Johnson era or even from the coalition of urban working class and educated women and men that elected Bill Clinton and Barak Obama as presidents. The old Democratic Party with its southern redoubt has virtually ceased existing in the USA south of the Mason -Dixon line. The Republican Party of Ronald Reagan and George Walker Bush has been eclipsed by the Donald J. Trump’s MAGA movement which is an agglomeration of disgruntled blue collar workers and believers in America as a “White country”. Members of MAGA believe in white supremacy and America as a global hegemonic country with supreme military power. This American posture has led to intervention in many parts of the world particularly in the Middle East, the Caribbean and Europe. Read Also: Federal Govt unveils five-year strategic security operations plan Nobody can say what will become the future of the Republican Party when Trump and his MAGA crowd exit the seat of power. The impact of the Trump phenomenon on other democracies has been quite remarkable. Even in old Great Britain, the iconic Conservative Party of Benjamin Disraeli is almost beyond recognition as representative of the property owning class and of land owners, titled aristocracy and industrial Britain; in one word, the party of empire. It is remarkable that the party of Winston Churchill is being pushed out of the way by Reform Britain party of Nigel Farage who sees himself as British Trump. The Liberal Party of William Gladstone has virtually disappeared into an unrecognizable liberal voice in the existing Social Liberals. It is the same story in Brazil and France respectively where liberals coalition forms around Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva (Lula ) and Emanuel Macron more or less riding on the fame and reputation of individual leaders but with little historical roots on which traditional political parties were hitherto formed. On the African continent, at least for now, the ANC has remained a permanent fixture of the political scene of South Africa. It seems southern Africa has a better record of solid political party history than other parts of the world, certainly than West Africa. The reason for this is because the parties were formed in reaction to the domination of white settlers whether in Zambia, Zimbabwe, Malawi, Namibia and even in Kenya and Tanzania. The story in Franco phone West Africa is not encouraging partly because nationalism in the area was late in coming, and when it came, it was pan territorial and not restricted to a single country. Nationalism and agitation for change by nationalists took the form of pan territorial rallies rather than parties. The rallies (Rassemblement Africaine) were not like in the Gold Coast or Sierra Leone but like the old NCNC (National Council of Nigeria and the Cameroons before it became one country party. Nigeria has had an unflattering history of political parties. This is due to the plural nature of the country and its complex ethnic and religious configuration. This has been exacerbated by the size and its undeveloped transportation infrastructure; yet it is in Nigeria ironically that one finds the example of a highly developed party like the Action Group with its highly developed party organization, bureaucracy almost competing with government bureaucracy. Unfortunately, we have reached the point in Nigeria where parties have really become electoral companies put together to contest elections after which individuals share dividends of who and who hold political positions as ministers, ambassadors and chairmen of government agencies. As I write now, only the APC seems to be a party with some history but hardly any ideology or serious political platform or party organization. The PDP from which the APC took power has virtually disappeared. All the other parties apart from the APC jostling to contest presidential and other elections in 2027 amount to funny but tragic charades and jokes played on Nigerians. The consequence of this is that there are no organizations holding the feet of politicians to fire. There is little oversight of government, parliament and the bureaucracy independent of government and its appointees. Everybody is eating from the same pot and political parties rely on government largesse rather than members’ financial contribution as was the case in the old Action Group party. There are no party intellectuals concerned with formulating party platforms and ideology and no one is responsible for the future and what history will say of political parties and their governments to future generations or perhaps no one cares! Without proper political parties there can be no well-organized and planned regular party conventions during which policies are subject to serious debate and interrogation. Lack of this results in poverty of policies and bad outcomes for the electorate and proper development of democracy. We have a long way to go in Nigeria in our journey of democracy and development and the world is not waiting for laggards like ourselves. 📢 ADVERTISEMENT DISCLAIMER: Links above are sponsored posts. 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