The Arrogance of Power and the Poverty of Choice in Nigerian Politics

Babayola M. Toungo

There was a time when the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) was so dominant, so expansive in its reach, that its leaders openly boasted they would rule Nigeria for sixty uninterrupted years. It did not sound implausible then. The PDP had become indistinguishable from the Nigerian state. Political relevance, access to resources, and personal survival were all mediated through the umbrella. Almost every politician of note rushed to its shade, not because of shared ideas, but because power had found a permanent address.

Then 2015 happened. The All Progressives Congress (APC) emerged, not as an ideological rupture, but as a superior coalition of ambitions. The PDP imploded with astonishing speed, and since then it has scarcely known rest. Defections, internal sabotage, and leadership paralysis hollowed it out. A party that once imagined itself as Nigeria’s destiny became a cautionary tale.

Today, the APC occupies the same psychological and political space the PDP once did – buoyed by incumbency, dismissive of dissent, and increasingly confident that control of state power can indefinitely substitute for legitimacy. The arrogance that preceded the PDP’s collapse is once again visible – contempt for internal democracy, intolerance of criticism, and the quiet belief that voters have nowhere else to go. History, rather than being learned from, is being reenacted. Yet this is not merely a story about parties. Parties are symptoms. The disease lies deeper – in the ideological emptiness of our politics and, more crucially, in the way we select those who govern us.

Nigeria’s political class is nomadic because our political system rewards movement without conviction. Politicians cross from party to party without moral cost because parties themselves are hollow. Platforms are interchangeable, manifestos ornamental, and principles disposable. Politics here is not about what you believe, but where you can win. Power is the only ideology that matters.

This nomadism thrives because our selection process is fundamentally broken. Candidates do not emerge through ideas, service, or persuasion; they emerge through money, godfathers, coercion, and litigation. Party primaries are rarely democratic contests – they are auctions. Delegates are purchased, rules are rewritten midstream, and outcomes are predetermined. What is called “political structure” is often nothing more than a cartel.

When the gate into power is controlled by money and patronage, the kind of people who emerge are predictable. Ideologues do not survive such a system; mercantilists do. Thinkers are crowded out by fixers. Builders are displaced by brokers. The process selects for ambition, not competence; loyalty to individuals, not loyalty to ideas. In such an environment, defection is rational. Why remain in a party when there is no ideological anchor and no internal justice? Why invest in building institutions when tickets are allocated in private rooms? Political nomadism, often condemned as moral failure, is in fact a logical response to a system that has no ideological or procedural integrity.

But the damage does not stop at the political class. Citizens are reduced to spectators in a drama whose outcome has already been negotiated. We are invited to vote, but rarely to choose. We inherit candidates we did not select, platforms we did not debate, and leaders we cannot discipline. Elections become rituals of endorsement rather than instruments of accountability.

This is where our own complicity becomes unavoidable. We follow mercantilist leaders with alarming devotion, defending them not on the basis of ideas or performance but on ethnic loyalty, personal access, or fear of the alternative. We mistake proximity to power for political relevance and confuse survival politics with leadership. In doing so, we surrender our most potent democratic weapon: selection.

Fixing Nigeria’s politics therefore begins not with slogans, but with the hard, unglamorous work of fixing how leaders emerge. Internal party democracy must cease to be a constitutional fiction and become a lived reality. Primaries must be transparent, competitive, and enforceable. Defection must carry political cost, not applause. Party membership must mean something beyond access to forms and patronage. More importantly, citizens must reclaim their role not just as voters, but as selectors. Democracy does not begin on election day; it begins at the point of nomination. As long as we accept candidates imposed by money, muscle, or manipulation, we will continue to recycle failure under new party labels.

The PDP’s fall should have taught us that arrogance without legitimacy is temporary. The APC’s current dominance should remind us that power without ideology is unstable. But unless the underlying selection process is reformed, the collapse of one dominant party will simply give birth to another – identical in behavior, different in name.

Nigeria does not lack political talent; it lacks political filtration. Until we redesign the sieve through which power passes – until ideas, competence, and integrity are allowed to compete – we will remain trapped in an endless loop of nomads without conviction, ruling a democracy without choice.

True political reform begins not at the ballot box, but at the gate that decides who gets on the ballot in the first place.