Abuja, Nigeria — Nigeria’s ruling party, the All Progressives Congress (APC), has strongly condemned a major national newspaper over an editorial suggesting that the recent trend of opposition governors defecting to the APC threatens the country’s multi-party democracy.
In a press statement released on Monday, the APC labelled the Daily Trust editorial, titled “APC Should Learn From History,” as a “sordid display of editorial bias” and accused the paper of peddling “untruths designed to malign APC.”
The party’s rebuttal, signed by Felix Morka, CON, the National Publicity Secretary of the APC, argued that the newspaper failed to cite any law that prohibits governors from exercising their constitutional freedom of association to switch political allegiance.
“How do you even coerce or cajole governors to dump their party and join another? Governors occupy some of the highest political offices in the country,” the statement questioned.
The Daily Trust editorial had warned that the wave of defections from the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) “portends a dangerous trend towards the erosion of multi-party democracy and a descent into a despicable one-party state.”
The APC counter-argued that governors, like all citizens, have a “constitutionally guaranteed freedom of association” and that their decision to join the ruling party is a “damning indictment of their failed leadership, dysfunction and lack of internal democracy.”
The party went on to accuse the newspaper and opposition actors of applying a “double standard,” noting that defections in Nigerian politics are neither new nor one-sided, pointing out that prominent former APC members have also joined other opposition parties like the African Democratic Congress (ADC).
The statement concluded by stressing that establishing a one-party system would require extensive constitutional reform and is “undesirable, unrealistic and, arguably, unattainable,” given that 19 political parties remain active in Nigeria’s democracy.
Add Comment