Decamping dies, long live decamping

The obituary has been due for a very long time. Political decamping in Nigeria has abused every excuse ever offered for it, surviving every republic, adapting to every constitutional arrangement, and – in this fractious Fourth Republic – becoming less of a scandal and more of a settled way of life.

It stopped looking like a regrettable exception and became the primary habit of power: fuelled by raw ambition, dressed up as strategic necessity, and defended with the brass-necked audacity of a normal privilege of office.

For decades, our politicians have moved from one party to another with the effortless ease of seasoned travellers changing airport lounges. They flit across the political aisle at luncheon, denounce their former hosts by tea-time, and swear eternal fidelity to a new flag before the port is passed at supper. The luggage invariably arrives; the principles do not.

But as the April 2026 sun sets on the administrative window for the 2027 general elections, a peculiar chill has settled over the polity. This week’s news – a frantic tally of who can still be admitted where, and which politician has abandoned one political homestead without yet securing a duvet in another – has the virtue of coming at exactly the right hour.

Beneath the arithmetic of forms and the ticking of the clock lies a more revealing drama. For the first time in our history, a political class raised on the doctrine of fluid allegiance is discovering that the digital gates are being bolted from within.

Decamping was never harmless. It made a mockery of the ballot by allowing a politician to seek a mandate under one banner and exercise it under another. It turned parties into roadside inns: places one lodged for a night, not houses one built. The voter, meanwhile, was expected to accept this with the stoicism of a passenger who has paid for a journey to London, only to find the driver has taken a personal fancy to Leeds.

Now, at least on paper, the undertaker has arrived. The Electoral Act 2026 presents itself as a death certificate for the old vice. Section 77 now requires parties to maintain digital membership registers tied to the National Identification Number and submit them to INEC no fewer than 30 days before primaries.

Once submitted, the registers are ‘frozen.’ The digital vault is locked. The old tricks of late entry, emergency adoption, and midnight reinvention are, in theory, shut out. Section 115 criminalises multiple nominations with penalties of up to two years’ imprisonment, while Section 33 permits substitution only in the event of death or voluntary withdrawal.

The law, for once, has begun to fence the field. But as we know, the Nigerian politician possesses a Houdini-like ability to escape from legal straightjackets. They have long lived by the doctrine that every shut door has a back entrance and every rule a negotiable edge.

To understand the present panic, one must look at the history of those who elevated the movement into a philosophy of public life. Atiku Abubakar remains the grand wanderer of recent party history, crossing from party to party in a way that has often looked less like conviction than elite restlessness elevated into method.

Peter Obi governed Anambra as an APGA man; he left the PDP for the Labour Party in May 2022 on the eve of the primaries, proving once again that in Nigeria, timing is often just another word for access.

Then came the governors elected on opposition platforms who, once in office, treated public mandates like private luggage: Dave Umahi in Ebonyi, Ben Ayade in Cross River, and Bello Matawalle in Zamfara. Each was elected under the PDP banner; each later defected to the APC without bothering to ask the voters again. Democracy, Nigerian-style: vote today, switch tomorrow.

What followed was not a few isolated departures but a wider migration. As crises within the PDP deepened, or were conveniently interpreted as deepening, governors began crossing over with the seriousness of men claiming strategy and the ease of men following power.

Sheriff Oborevwori of Delta moved in April, along with Ifeanyi Okowa and much of the state party structure, amid talk of a “sinking boat.” Umo Eno of Akwa Ibom followed in June, saying closeness to the centre would better serve stability and development. Peter Mbah of Enugu joined the APC in October, calling it a move for federal connection and collaborative advantage. In the same month, Douye Diri of Bayelsa formally left the PDP after months of speculation, citing consultations and the decay of the party’s internal life.

A later round completed the picture of a political class moving less by conviction than by weather. Siminalayi Fubara of Rivers defected in December, after what was described as a consultation “at the highest level,” citing the state’s interest and his lack of political cover in the PDP. By January 2026, Agbu Kefas of Taraba had been received into the APC, in the familiar language of access, proximity and developmental reward. Ahmadu Fintiri of Adamawa and Dauda Lawal of Zamfara also joined the procession, while Jackson Ademola Adeleke, in a more eccentric twist, crossed to the Accord Party.

Alongside them came legislators, local operators and party structures, all changing platforms without a fresh ballot being cast. The arithmetic was simple and damning: APC 31, PDP 2 (as at Thursday morning), APGA 1, Labour 1, Accord 1. Voters chose one set of colours; politicians now govern under another.

This migration is underpinned by a political culture that treats the party congress not as a deliberative assembly, but as a theatre of managed enthusiasm. We have seen it all before. Delegates arrive in a haze of dust and perfume, in starched fabrics and cultivated urgency, carrying grievance and expectation.

Outside the venues, buses unload rented loyalists instructed to chant on cue. Inside, speeches are delivered, and procedures are observed with ceremonial boredom. But the real business happens in the shadows – in hotel suites and opaque transactions where candidates are “anointed.” A congress in Nigeria is supposed to be an instrument of party life; instead, it often looks like a livestock market with microphones. Debate is staged; consensus is purchased.

When the defenders of this conduct claim that Nigerian parties have no ideology, they do so with a worldly shrug. It is a ruinous confession. To say parties have no philosophy is to admit that politics has been stripped of content and retained only as machinery. It reduces democracy to mere transport. Ambition is what moves; ideology is what gets left behind.

If the history is depressing, the last few weeks have been surreal. No fewer than 57 federal lawmakers defected in plain sight: 44 in the House of Representatives and 13 in the Senate. One sultry Tuesday, 27 members crossed the floor at once, as though ideology were a heavy suitcase easier to carry in a crowd.

The APC picked up 14 like a landlord collecting overdue rent, while the ADC took eight. Labour gained one through Philip Agbese, who made the customary journey wrapped in the solemn language of “consultation.” In the Senate, nine members crossed to the ADC, giving that party the temporary glamour of a waiting room for the displaced.

But why the rush? Why now? The answer lies in the “Digital Gatekeeper.” With party primaries now barely a month away (scheduled for late May 2026), the Section 77 “Freeze Zone” has arrived. If a politician’s name is not in the digital ledger submitted this month, they cannot legally emerge as a candidate next month. The “Midnight Defector” is hitting a hard electronic wall.

Adding to this paralysis is the news from the Supreme Court. The notice that rulings are reserved in the PDP and ADC leadership crises has created a state of suspended animation. In our polity, the signature on a nomination form is the difference between a candidacy and a nullity.

By reserving judgment, the apex court has left aspirants in the lurch. If you are a PDP member looking to jump ship, you are caught in a paradox: jump too late, and the Section 77 register is frozen; jump too early, and you might find the Supreme Court has validated the very faction you just fled.

This uncertainty has birthed the frantic merger talks between the ADC and the PRP. It is a story of survival – an attempt to build a “Third Force” shelter before the regulatory storm breaks. But here, too, the clock is a cruel master. The Yoruba have a proverb that resonates here: “It is lack of fortune that leads one to the PRP, but it is the law that makes one stay.”

Chinua Achebe popularised the Igbo saying that a man who brings ant-infested firewood into his hut should not complain when the lizards gather. The ADC-PRP talks are ant-infested firewood; they are dry enough to carry, but perhaps too late to ignite a fire that can withstand the May primary deadlines.

Civil society groups like Yiaga Africa and the CLEEN Foundation have warned for years that these defections erode legitimacy and weaken accountability. When a voter chooses one thing and gets another, democracy is not merely disappointed; it is deceived. The ballot is not an opening bid in a private negotiation among elites.

We are told that political “smartness” is a virtue in our republic. But too often, this “smartness” is merely dishonour with better tailoring. The British tradition of “crossing the floor” usually involves a deep, often painful, break with one’s party over a matter of profound national policy. In Nigeria, crossing the carpet is more akin to a seasonal flit – moving to where the grass is greener and the patronage more plentiful.

There is a harder principle that must now be stated without ornament. Representation is not private property. A seat in parliament is not a family goat to be tethered wherever the owner finds the most succulent grass. Once a politician defects from the party on whose platform he was elected, the moral coherence of the mandate is broken.

The masquerade has danced for a very long time, and the square is tired. Nigeria has buried the corpse of political nomadism before, only to watch it stir again beneath a different party cap. The grave is seldom the problem; it is the burial custom.

But this time, the soil may be firmer. The deadline is not merely for the submission of names; it is for the submission of the form. It asks whether our democracy can finally insist on sequence: that one belongs before one contests, and that the voter is not a mere spectator invited only for the opening act. Interestingly, some governors have already declared themselves “freelancers” for obvious reasons.

If the law is to mean anything, then the institutions around it must cease behaving like nervous accomplices. INEC must not blink. The courts must not perfect, once again, the art of solemn evasion. Citizens must stop applauding betrayal as if it were cleverness.

The seasoned tactician may soon discover the humiliation of arriving too late. No emergency baptism. No improvised loyalty. No rebirth under fresh colours simply because the old ones no longer fit.

The obituary is written. The grave is dug. What remains is to ensure the burial is final. If the mandate is to be validated, the rule must be simple and absolute: Once you decamp from the party on whose platform you were elected, the mandate is voided. You must vacate the seat and return to the people to ask for their consent under your new colours. Simpliciter.

Only then will we stop being a nation of nomads and start being a republic of citizens. If some doors must close, it is only because too many have been left open for far too long. Decamping must die, so that democracy may live.