POLITICAL PARTIES AND IDEOLOGY 

 May 29 of every year is now our “handover” day, and or, “swearing”-in day as against being a Democracy Day. From the year 2000 to 2018, May 29 was marked as Democracy Day. However, June 12 of every year is now our new Democracy Day. It is sad to note that after 25 years of uninterrupted democracy, our political parties have neither ideology nor clear cut differences. Our political parties are more or less platforms for capturing political power. Their funding mechanisms are still largely from the “state resources” instead of from individual membership contributions and other activities as done in other climes. Our political parties do not have a clear-cut dichotomy in terms of socio-economic outlook or programmes. 

 The absence of political party formations based on ideology is a major setback in our democracy. In advance democracies political parties are ideologically based. People with similar ideology often team up to form a political party in order to promote their politico-economic ideology. They often seek for like minds as their members, and or supporters. Members of a political party are supposed to be people who share similar political and or economic ideology. 

In simple term, a political ideology could be defined as a set of doctrines or beliefs that are shared by members of a social group which forms the basis for political or economic views. More so, a political ideology is a coherent set of views on politics and what should be the role of government in the state.

There are two major political ideologies which are: Right-wing and Left-wing. Right Wing political parties favour liberal socio-economic policies with capitalist economic model. On the other hand, the left-wing political parties favour centrally planned socio-economic policies with socialists economic model. You can never divorce or detach politics from the economy. You have to stabilize the economy for you to stabilize the polity.

 Part of the reason for widespread “defections” from one political party to another among our politicians, especially from the main opposition PDP to the ruling APC and vice versa is lack of political ideology. Politicians only seek for platforms to pursue their political ambitions. In Nigeria one can safely say politicians only join parties in order to have political platforms for contesting elective offices not because they share similar political or economic ideology. After all the parties have no clear-cut differences ideologically. As long as the situation remains, defections from one political party to another will remain a permanent feature in our political system. 

Nurudeen Dauda, Kaduna State