ABUJA, Nigeria — In a robustly worded press statement published on Monday the All Progressives Congress dismissed an editorial in Daily Trust titled “APC Should Learn From History” as a “sordid display of editorial bias” and an attempt to “malign APC” for what the party describes as lawful and democratic recruitment of governors and other figures who have chosen to join its ranks.
The party’s national publicity secretary Felix Morka argued that the paper’s claim that a string of defections to APC “portends a dangerous trend towards the erosion of multi-party democracy and a descent into a despicable one-party state” is unfounded and legally incoherent.
This rebuttal arrives against the backdrop of a fractious 2025 political calendar in which governors, senior former ministers and high profile politicians have moved between parties with renewed intensity.
The defections are real and well documented. In recent months, former Attorney-General Abubakar Malami publicly left APC to join the African Democratic Congress ADC and former national chairman Chief John Odigie-Oyegun formally picked up an ADC membership card among other high profile moves.
What the APC statement demands of journalists is clarity. The party insists there is no statute that criminalises or forbids governors from changing party affiliation while in office. Legal analysts and seasoned constitutional commentators broadly agree that there is a lacuna in the law as it applies to executive office holders.
The constitutional provisions that force a legislator to vacate a seat after certain forms of defection are real but they are directed at the legislature not the executive. Sections such as 109(1)(g) and equivalent state provisions have been interpreted in favour of seat vacation for lawmakers in defined circumstances. The law is notably less clear on governors and deputy governors.
A simple map of the law helps explain the rancour. When members of the National Assembly or the State Houses of Assembly jump ship the constitution contains mechanisms that have been deployed to declare their seats vacant in some cases. By contrast a sitting governor who leaves the party on whose platform he or she was elected is not automatically removed by any comparable constitutional clause.
Courts and legal opinion have therefore repeatedly observed that executive defections have no automatic legal consequence other than political fallout. That legal silence fuels the very controversies commentators warn about.
APC’s statement also catalogues turncoats who have left the party for other homes over the last decade and more. The point is at once rhetorical and historical. Party switching is a long standing feature of Nigerian politics. Rotimi Amaechi, Nasir el-Rufai, Rauf Aregbesola and others have moved political platforms at different moments. The present back and forth is not novel though its configuration may be.
The recent emergence of ADC as a focal point for former APC stalwarts and other opposition leaders has exacerbated perceptions of a realignment ahead of 2027. News outlets have tracked a flurry of transfers and coalition talks that make 2025 feel like a year of political reshuffle rather than a decisive constitutional shift.
APC’s counterargument to Daily Trust is simple. It says democracies are built on freedoms, and the freedom to associate and to change association sits at the heart of a democratic order. The party asked the paper to show the law that prohibits governors from switching parties and accused the editorial of engaging in “warped conjecture.” Yet that legal defence, while accurate in technical terms, does not resolve the deeper political question.
When many governors and other heavyweights relocate to a single party it changes political arithmetic. It concentrates patronage and resources in ways that reshape electoral competition and can, if unchecked, corrode plural political opportunity. That is the discomfort Daily Trust was trying to register however clumsily the paper may have framed it.
Fact checking the APC claim that Nigeria currently has “about 19 political parties registered and active” reveals a gap between slogan and reality. The Independent National Electoral Commission’s own records show a much larger universe of registered parties and a continuing churn as some associations seek registration while INEC processes applications and court cases over deregistration linger.
INEC’s public materials list dozens of registered parties and as recently as 2025 the commission was handling scores of applications and disputes over party status. That makes a blunt claim of only 19 active parties misleading. In any event, the number of registered parties alone does not capture the concentration of political power in the two or three dominant groupings at national level.
There is a political logic to the reluctance of legal actors to extend legislative anti-defection rules to governors. Removing a governor elected by popular vote would require a constitutional mechanism that courts would be slow to adopt without explicit legislative change.
Proposals have been floated in the National Assembly to legislate restraints on executive defections (in July 2025 members debated a bill to require defectors from executive office to resign) but such a law would raise difficult questions about voters’ mandate and the separation of individual political rights from collective party guarantees. Those debates are unresolved and politically combustible.
So where does this leave Nigeria’s democracy? Three points deserve emphasis.
First, the law does not presently compel governors to vacate office on account of defection. That legal reality underpins the APC statement and it is supported by courts and mainstream legal commentary. At the same time, the absence of a ban does not mean that mass defections are normatively unimportant. They alter power balances and can reduce the effective competitiveness of elections when resources and incumbency consolidate around a single organisation.
Second, journalistic duty requires precision. The press has a role in naming risks to plural politics without sliding into hyperbole. When Daily Trust warned of a drift to one-party rule its editorial reflected a political anxiety that is shared by many observers. APC is right to demand that newspapers avoid sloppy claims about law where none exist. Equally newspapers should not glamourise defectors or underplay the democratic consequences of heavy centralisation of power. Both institutions (party and press) have responsibilities that go beyond the narrow contest over narratives.
Third, the raw numbers and personalities are less determinative than the institutional guardrails. Electoral integrity, independent watchdogs, a pluralistic media landscape and robust intra-party democracy are the true bulwark against any slide towards dominance by a single party. If APC’s renewed recruitment is matched by healthy internal contestation, transparent primaries, and open policy debates then the shift will look less like capture and more like ordinary political realignment. If it is accompanied by clientelist consolidation and shrinking space for dissent then alarm bells are justified. The legal architecture alone cannot protect pluralism. Institutional practice must.
For the immediate political horizon the practical implications are twofold. The opposition must contend with defections that weaken its organisational base even as it attempts coalitions in new formations such as the ADC. The ruling party must manage the optics of accumulation and demonstrate commitment to democratic norms beyond recruitment headlines.
Observers will watch whether the coming months feature legislative reforms, court challenges or fresh electoral strategies as parties reposition for 2027. Already INEC is busy with party registration and court challenges that will shape the formal party landscape between now and the next general election.
In conclusion, the APC press statement is technically correct in challenging the Daily Trust to cite a law that does not exist and in insisting that freedom of association is constitutionally protected. The broader truth is more complicated. A legal vacuum on executive defection combined with a pattern of mass political migration heightens political risk even if it does not, in itself, create a one-party state.
That risk can be managed but not by legalistic rhetoric alone. It will require institutional reform, political restraint, and a press that names danger without abandoning accuracy. Nigeria’s democratic health depends less on whether governors may change party cards and more on how parties, courts, regulators and the media handle the consequences.
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