By Musa Bakare.
If there is a plague eating into the soul of Nigerian political parties like a devouring fire, it is the iniquity of celebrating defectors while despising the faithful, the foundational men and women who built the party like watchmen rebuilding a broken wall.
How does one explain a system where a man who cursed the party yesterday, mocked its leaders, fought against its progress, and sowed seeds of discord… suddenly walks back in with false humility, and within days is crowned with party tickets, appointments, privileges, and political blessings?
Meanwhile, those who defended the party were like gatekeepers in the night,
those who stood through storms, those who spent their own money, those who fought against lies and propaganda, those who endured intimidation,
those who walked from ward to ward blowing the trumpet of the party are left outside like strangers at the gate.
What kind of political wisdom elevates the prodigal above the faithful.
What kind of system honours a deserter over a defender.
When a party begins to glorify defectors and forget its loyalists, it breaks a divine principle Of sowing and reaping. Once a party reverses this order, it moves from grace into decline.
Because the message becomes a spiritual abomination:“Do not be loyal. Betray us first. Wound us. Fight us. Then return and we will reward you.”
This is how parties crumble.
Not because the opposition is strong, but because the spirit of injustice weakens them from within.
Not because the enemy is powerful, but because disloyalty is enthroned and loyalty is crucified.
Most defectors do not return out of conviction or repentance, they return because the altars they ran to have fallen, they return because their light went out elsewhere, they return because they seek what they could not obtain in their former camp, they return because they perceive appointments, not because they seek alignment.
These are not political assets. Many are spiritual liabilities, carriers of confusion, entitlement, and discord. Yet they are often placed above the labourers who carried the ark through the wilderness. Who cast this spell upon Nigerian politics ?
Let it be declared without fear; Loyal party members are not slaves. They are not expendable vessels. They are the pillars of the house.
They are the mobilisers, the foot soldiers, the intercessors on the field.
They carry the weight.
They endure the heat of battle. They turn political hope into political victory.
For any political party to survive, this ungodly culture must be discouraged.
The culture of elevating political wanderers.
The culture of insulting the faithful. The culture of valuing noise above sacrifice. The culture of honouring convenience above commitment.
Every party must return to righteous principles:
Reward the faithful first.
Honour those who stayed in the storm. Elevate those who laboured in the trenches. Let defectors go to the back of the line.
No automatic ticket.
No automatic appointment.
No automatic throne for political travellers.
Political organizations perish when their faithful lose strength. No party survives when the loyal become spectators and the disloyal become kings.
Nigeria’s democracy will only rise when political parties honour those who carried them through the fires and storms of election battles. A house collapses when it rejects its pillars.
A nation declines when it despises its faithful.
A party dies when it enthrones opportunists.
– Musa Asiru Bakare, a Political Analyst, writes from Lokoja, Kogi State.
