Former President Goodluck Jonathan has has warned that any attempt to impose a one-party system in Nigeria will suffocate the nation’s political space and potentially lead to chaos and anarchy.
Speaking in Abuja on Wednesday May 7 during a tribute to the late elder statesman Chief Edwin Clark, Jonathan said the current wave of defections to the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) could erode democratic balance.
“If we arrive at a one-party state through the back door by political manipulations, then we are heading for crisis,” Jonathan cautioned.
He acknowledged that while one-party systems have worked in certain nations under specific historical contexts, Nigeria’s complex ethnic and religious fabric requires a more inclusive political architecture.
The former president’s comments come amid growing concern that the opposition, particularly the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), is being gutted by defections and quiet endorsements of President Bola Tinubu’s second-term ambition even from some PDP governors.
Jonathan pointed to Tanzania’s post-independence experience under Julius Nyerere as an example of a one-party model that was “properly planned” to promote unity. “But it was not by accident,” he emphasized. “Nigeria’s situation demands deliberate planning, not political opportunism.”
Chief Edwin Clark, an Ijaw leader and political icon, died in February at the age of 97.
