PARTY POLITICS AND FUTURE OF NIGERIAN DEMOCRACY: AN EXAMINATION OF FOURTH REPUBLIC

Democracy provides the opportunities for the people to freely exercise their voting rights in the selection of representatives who govern them. Democracy depends on parties to survive, since the structure of elections right from citizens participation to candidates’ selection and presentation of competing political programmes is done by political parties. It is on this note that political parties occupy a special place in the democratic equation. Thus, this paper examines the activities of Nigerian political parties since 1999 to date. The result of examination revealed that Nigerian political parties did not possessed features of political parties such as ideology, party manifestoes, likeminded people as well as viable opposition party. All parties are engaged in intra party conflict rather than embarked on programmes that would benefit the masses. The result of undemocratic conduct of political parties such as candidate’s imposition, unclear manifestoes as revealed in this paper, gave rise to assassination that portrayed Nigeria as one of the most risky nation in the world. The paper recommend that all political parties should be reformed and reformed in such a way that ideology and discipline