Political Parties and the Nature of Opposition Politics in Nigeria

Abstract

Opposition political parties in Nigeria have been battling with the politics of zero sum game where the winner takes all and the loser loses all in a democratic setting since political independence in 1960. The ruling party uses powers of incumbency, state treasury, state apparatus and all advantages of power to emasculate and dominate the political arena. This paper examines the role that All Progressive Congress (APC) and the People Democratic Party (PDP) played as the major opposition political parties in the Fourth Republic. The role of opposition is sacrosanct as it is essential to the smooth running of any representative democracy, the paper recommends that government should, therefore, at all levels strive to do away with any policy that will thwart the effort of opposition because in Nigeria most of the weaknesses of the opposition parties emanate from the incumbents’ hostile policies, which are mostly aimed at fragmenting and weakening the opposition groups.
Keywords:,,,  and