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Over 120 Lawmakers Dump Parties as Wave of Defections Reshapes National Assembly — Yiaga Africa, CISLAC Call It "Betrayal of Voters' Trust"
More than 120 federal lawmakers have defected from the parties on whose platforms they were elected since the 10th National Assembly was inaugurated in 2023.
The 10th National Assembly has witnessed an unprecedented wave of defections since its inauguration in June 2023, with over 120 federal lawmakers abandoning the political parties on whose platforms they were elected. The mass cross‑carpeting, which has accelerated dramatically in recent weeks following the high‑profile defection of former presidential candidates Peter Obi and Rabiu Kwankwaso to the Nigeria Democratic Congress (NDC), has now drawn sharp condemnation from leading civil society organisations, including Yiaga Africa and the Civil Society Legislative Advocacy Centre (CISLAC), who describe the trend as "a betrayal of voters' trust" and a symptom of deep ideological bankruptcy within Nigeria's political class.
The defections cut across both chambers — the Senate and the House of Representatives — and span the entire spectrum of political parties. Lawmakers have gravitated towards the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), the Labour Party, the New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP), the African Democratic Congress (ADC), the Action Peoples Party (APP), and the newly emerging Nigeria Democratic Congress (NDC). The House of Representatives alone has seen PDP members from Delta, Akwa Ibom, Kaduna, Katsina, Rivers, and several other states defect to the APC, alongside NNPP lawmakers from Kano who abandoned their party for the ruling platform. The Senate has experienced similar shifts, though at a slower pace.
Civil Society Sounds the Alarm
Yiaga Africa, in a statement released on Wednesday, described the defection epidemic as "a fundamental threat to representative democracy." The organisation's executive director, Samson Itodo, argued that the trend had rendered Nigeria's legislature "a marketplace of personal ambition rather than a hallowed chamber of principled legislation." Itodo called on the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to begin enforcing the constitutional provisions that mandate bye‑elections when lawmakers defect, a provision that has been routinely ignored by successive National Assemblies.
CISLAC's executive director, Auwal Musa Rafsanjani, was equally blunt, describing the defections as "a gross betrayal of the mandate freely given by Nigerian voters." He warned that if the trend continued unchecked, the 2027 general election would be rendered meaningless, as voters would have no guarantee that the candidates they choose would remain with the parties under which they were elected. "The National Assembly is becoming a club of political mercenaries," Rafsanjani said. "They move where the wind blows, and in the process, they destroy the very foundation of democratic accountability."
A Crisis of Ideology or Survival?
Political analysts attribute the defections to a combination of factors: the deepening crises within the PDP and the APC as the 2027 elections approach, the rise of new platforms like the NDC that offer fresh branding, and the perennial Nigerian phenomenon of politicians moving to where they believe their electoral prospects are brightest. However, the sheer scale of the defections — over a third of the 360‑member House of Representatives — has created a legislature that barely resembles the one Nigerians voted for in 2023. For many observers, the defections are less about ideology and more about the political class recalibrating ahead of 2027. With President Tinubu already consolidating his hold on the APC and the opposition scrambling to form a credible coalition, lawmakers are positioning themselves on platforms that offer the clearest path to re‑election — voters' sentiments be damned.
Stay tuned to Unuevbo TV for more analysis on the defection crisis, the National Assembly's changing composition, and the implications for Nigeria's 2027 elections.
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