Nigeria, Africa’s most populous democracy, is experiencing a political consolidation so dramatic that analysts are openly asking whether the country is sliding into one-party rule. The numbers are stark, and they are getting worse by the week.
The ruling All Progressives Congress now controls 31 of Nigeria’s 36 state governorships. The Peoples Democratic Party, which governed Nigeria for 16 uninterrupted years and was once the largest political party in Africa, has been reduced to a single governor in Oyo State under Seyi Makinde. The All Progressives Grand Alliance holds Anambra, the Labour Party retains Abia, and the Accord Party governs Osun. Every other state in the federation answers to the APC.
The collapse has been breathtaking in its speed. In 2023, when the current political cycle began, the PDP held 11 governorships. Within three years, more than half of those governors defected to the ruling party. The most recent departures of Enugu Governor Peter Mbah and Bayelsa Governor Douye Diri sent shockwaves through the political class, sweeping the traditionally opposition-leaning South-East and South-South regions firmly into APC territory.
At the legislative level, the picture is equally lopsided. The APC commands roughly 280 of 360 seats in the House of Representatives. The PDP, which entered the 10th Assembly with 115 members, has been gutted to just 38. In a single dramatic day, 27 lawmakers crossed the floor to join the ruling party. The Labour Party holds 12 seats. The New Nigeria Peoples Party clings to 5.
The drivers of this migration are an open secret in Nigerian politics. In a system where access to state resources and federal patronage is concentrated around the ruling party, political survival demands proximity to power. Governors who defect gain access to federal allocations, infrastructure projects, and the informal networks of influence that sustain political careers. Those who remain in opposition risk being starved of resources and marginalized in a system that rewards loyalty above all else.
The PDP’s internal crisis has accelerated its own destruction. The party has been riven by a bitter feud between Oyo Governor Seyi Makinde and FCT Minister Nyesom Wike, the former Rivers State governor who defected to support the APC in 2023. Rather than presenting a united front against the ruling party, the PDP has spent its energy on fratricidal battles that have driven members toward the exits.
The implications for the 2027 general elections are profound. Without a functioning opposition, the basic mechanism of democratic accountability is compromised. Elections become coronations. Legislative oversight becomes performative. The checks and balances that multiparty democracy is meant to provide simply cease to function.
This is not a theoretical concern. Nigeria has been here before. The country endured decades of military dictatorship before transitioning to civilian rule in 1999. That transition was built on the promise of competitive multiparty democracy, a system in which power could change hands peacefully and voters had meaningful choices. The current trajectory threatens to hollow out that promise from within, replacing military autocracy not with genuine democracy but with a civilian one-party structure that maintains the appearance of elections while eliminating their substance.
The constitutional dimension adds another layer of concern. Nigeria’s constitution mandates a multiparty system. Political parties are required to have national reach and cannot be formed along ethnic or religious lines. But the constitution says nothing about what happens when one party absorbs all the others through defections rather than electoral victory. The APC’s dominance has been achieved not at the ballot box but through the systematic poaching of elected officials who won their seats on opposition platforms.
Civil society organizations have begun raising the alarm. The Centre for Democracy and Development has warned that Nigeria’s democracy will “wither silently” if defections go unchallenged. Legal scholars are debating whether lawmakers who switch parties should forfeit their seats, as the constitution arguably requires in some circumstances. But with the APC controlling the legislature, the judiciary facing its own independence questions, and the electoral commission under political pressure, institutional remedies appear limited.
The irony is impossible to miss. Just days ago, FCT Minister Wike threatened to shoot a Channels Television journalist who was asking, on live television, about the weakening of opposition parties. The question that provoked the minister’s outburst was precisely the question that Nigeria needs to answer: what happens to a democracy when there is no meaningful opposition left to challenge those in power?
For ordinary Nigerians, the consequences are already being felt. In states where governors have defected, policy priorities often shift to align with the federal ruling party’s agenda rather than local needs. Legislative representatives who switch parties owe their continued political survival to their new patrons, not to the constituents who elected them. The social contract that democracy promises, that leaders are accountable to the people who choose them, is being rewritten in real time. As 2027 approaches, Nigeria faces a defining question. Will the country’s democratic institutions prove strong enough to sustain genuine competition, or will the APC’s gravitational pull reduce elections to a formality? The answer will shape not just Nigeria’s future but the trajectory of democracy across the African continent, where the most populous nation’s example carries outsized influence.
