POLITICAL PARTIES, ELECTORAL PROCESS AND DEMOCRACY IN NIGERIA

Abstract

Political Parties constitute one of the critical elements of the electoral process and democracy as they serve as platforms where credible citizenship representation can be processed and provide policy choices for the people. Indeed, political parties are central instruments for mass mobilization for the citizenry for an all-inclusive process of democratic governance. Parties under aliberal democratic system are expected to deepen democracy by ensuring credible, transparent, free and fair electoral process which would advance public welfare in line with their manifestos and ideologies. However, experiences of lack of adherence to procedures, godfatherism, disrespect for rules and laws, manipulation and abuse of system, malpractices and several other unethical behavior by political parties in Nigeria over the years cast doubt as regards therelevance of political parties in promoting credible and transparent electoral process and democracy in Nigeria. Using secondary data, the article X-rays the irrelevance of Political Parties in electoral process and democracy in Nigeria. Thus, the central argument of this paper is that, political parties in Nigeria have largely lost their roles of interest articulation and aggregation which promote acredible and transparent electoral process and democracy. Hence, the article made the following recommendations: First, internal party democracy is a must and parties should through strict enforced legal provisions be made to do what is right. Second, the phenomena of electoral rigging and godfatherism should be laid to rest and allow credible, transparent and popular choices thrive. Lastly, Nigerian politicians need to change their attitude and behavior towards party politics and elections and should know that non-democrats cannot run democracy.