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“When politics is no longer a mission but a profession, politicians become more self-serving than public servants”
– Emmanuel Macron, the President of France.
Last Thursday, February 25, 2021, I was one of the two panelists on Politics Nationwide, a network programme of Federal Radio Corporation of Nigeria. Mrs. Chinwe Nnorom, a director in the bureaucracy of the Peoples Democratic Party, and I were the two guests on the show. The topic of discussion was, “Regulating Defections from Political Parties”, anchored by Joy Makka. The programme moderator revealed that Nigeria has had a history of defection of party members from one political party to another right from the colonial era. In 1951, the first celebrated cross-carpeting episode occurred in Nigeria; which consequently robbed the leader of the National Convention of Nigerians and Cameroons, Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe, the chance to lead the government’s business of Western Nigeria. This means that the phenomenon has been with us for a whopping 70 years!