Nigerian Parties and Party Switching in the Fourth Republic

This chapter discusses some critical issues related to party politics and party switching, constitutional views on party switching, the manifestations of party switching and the impact of party switching on the democratisation of the Fourth Republic. Interestingly, the chapter informs that party defections have become an acceptable norm in Nigeria’s Fourth Republic. This has been favoured by a lapse in the Nigerian Constitution made possible by an uninformed electorate perpetrated by self-serving and ambitious unprincipled politicians as a result of lack of sound ideology and principled politics. The common cases reported in this study make the Nigerian case a special and interesting one for all readers.