POLITICAL PARTY SUPREMACY, PARTY DISCIPLINE AND NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT IN NIGERIA'S FOURTH REPUBLIC

This paper focuses on the challenges of party politics in Nigeria and how it undermines National Development in the Fourth Republic. Political parties are supposedly, carriers of democratic principles. Their nature and functions make political parties central to democratic governance especially in new democracies like Nigeria where the challenge of building strong and formidable democratic institutions is critical. Since the beginning of the Fourth Republic in Nigeria, political parties have appeared to be ineffective to properly govern the Nigerian state. Political party challenges such as weak institutionalization, lack of coherent ideology, godfatherism, party discipline and absence of party supremacy have contributed negatively in preventing political parties from actualizing their full democratic responsibilities. Against this backdrop, this paper examines the challenges of party supremacy and party discipline as part of the problems affecting the progress of political parties in Nigeria in the Fourth Republic. In fact, this paper investigates the implications of these challenges on Nigeria’s national development and show how these prevent the ruling All Progressive Congress (APC) from effectively governing Nigeria between 2015 and 2019. Findings of this paper reveals that, to achieve comprehensive national development in Nigeria, political parties must be re-institutionalized and ideologically reshaped to serve as the major pillars of democracy and good governance. In attaining its objective, the paper relies on secondary data basically drawn from different sources including journal articles, newspapers reports, op-eds, party statement and archives, as well as other research monographs.