Chima Nnaji, a lawyer, politician and political affairs analyst, has warned that Nigeria’s democracy has lost its meaning, arguing that political greed, unchecked defections and abuse of power have hollowed out governance and weakened democratic institutions across the country.
In an interview with ARISE NEWS on Saturday, Nnaji said the increasing concentration of power in the ruling party, mass defections by elected officials and the erosion of constitutional safeguards signal a system that has stopped serving the people it was designed to protect.
“I don’t think democracy is working any longer. Most of these things are contrived, they are induced. So when a system is no longer delivering on its promise or purpose, that system has become useless so to speak.”
He accused political actors of deliberately manipulating constitutional provisions to legitimise defections, noting that lawmakers who abandon the parties under which they were elected often escape sanctions by engineering artificial divisions within their former parties.
“Most of these things are now contrived in such a manner that they put seasoning in the political parties to say there are divisions, even in instances where the divisions have not gone deep as Supreme Court decisions have enunciated.”
Nnaji described Nigeria’s political ideology as fundamentally rooted in self-interest rather than service, insisting that greed now defines party Politics regardless of platform or affiliation.
“If the ideology of political parties of note in this country, there is an ideology. The ideology is greed. The greed is determined whether it is the greed of one man who is dispensing the power from a halcyon position, or the greed of a clique that may have come together in cahoots to corner the political power of dispensing largess to others.”
He warned that such greed inevitably produces impunity, particularly when those in power believe they can act without consequence.
“It is that greed that produces impunity. When you are not able to satiate based on the order of the day, you embark on impunity if you have the power to sustain it. And there’s no way you will embark on impunity without stepping on good people, who either react or leave you to stew in your own pot.”
Drawing parallels with Nigeria’s recent political history, he argued that the current dominance of the All Progressives Congress mirrors the excesses of the Peoples Democratic Party during its years of control, noting that many of today’s political actors learned their tactics during the PDP era.
““It is that greed that produces impunity. When you are not able to satiate based on the order of the day, you embark on impunity if you have the power to sustain it. And there’s no way you will embark on impunity without stepping on good people, who either react or leave you to stew in your own pot.”
“The culture of impunity ensured that they denigrated the Southeast. The Southeast may have looked very helpless. They still stuck to PDP, somehow, rather willingly. But you saw at the end of the day, when somebody else came to tantalize them, they began to crumble.”
According to him, the wave of defections currently favouring the ruling party is far from over, stressing that political opportunism often leads to internal conflict once power dynamics shift.
“When there is impunity, all it takes to unseat it is a higher level of power that can impugn the system without repercussion, at least in the immediate term,” he said.
Nnaji insisted that Nigeria’s crisis is ultimately a leadership failure, not merely a cultural problem, arguing that leadership must be grounded in knowledge, conscience and moral discipline.
“So what we are saying is essentially our problem is leadership problem. And that leadership is the one that is not rooted in knowledge, because we are not very painstaking people. Many of us are not painstaking, In the real sense, it is a leadership problem. Leadership must be rooted in good knowledge, good conscience. If you don’t have knowledge, no matter how good you are, you can’t deliver.”
He added that leadership rooted in knowledge naturally produces accountability and patriotism, without the need for coercion.
“So when you have leadership that has been thoroughly schooled, that have knowledge, it will not do any other thing than do good. Patriotism becomes an assumption. You don’t preach it. You practice it and everybody follows.”
On the road to the 2027 general elections, Nnaji cautioned Nigerians against assuming that defections by governors and political elites automatically translate into popular support, arguing that many of these moves are disconnected from the electorate.
“The fact that governors are defecting does not necessarily mean that the people are happy with it. Because don’t forget that some of those governors were really not well elected, the first instance. So they can as well go to any way they want to fester their own nest. They are not going with the people. The unfortunate thing is that the people are being bereft with no good Organisation. They don’t have any opportunity, or so it seems for now, to have the possibility of expressing their political will.”
“What has been happening in this country is that they don’t allow the people to vote. And yet, when they manage to allow them, the votes don’t count. The glitches, the shenanigans, the manipulations, the emasculations, all these things make it possible that votes don’t count.”
Despite the bleak outlook, Nnaji said the current political order is not sustainable, suggesting that a new political force could eventually emerge to challenge both the APC and PDP.
“So the point is that now the egregious folly that is going on in the political environment may not be sustainable. It is being played the PDP card. And we have seen the PDP card was terminated by the APC contrivances. And maybe there will be another third force that will terminate the APC contrivance so that both APC and PDP will be consigned to the rubbish bin of history and the people will have their own freedom.”
He concluded that meaningful change may come unexpectedly, beyond the calculations of today’s political elite. “So the point I am making is, don’t get deceived by what is happening now. These are human templates. God has a way of intervening in the affairs of this country. He takes records. He knows everything and has the power to do anything as He pleases.”
Erizia Rubyjeana
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