The Nigeria Democratic Congress has made a sworn affidavit of party loyalty a mandatory condition for all aspirants seeking its nomination for elective office, requiring candidates to execute a legally binding commitment before a competent court as part of their nomination documentation before the party will clear them for any primary or substitution process.
National Chairman Moses Cleopas said the measure addressed the defection culture that had systematically weakened Nigerian political parties for decades, in which politicians used parties as platforms to win office and then abandoned them for personal or financial advantage, destroying the institutional memory and structural coherence that mature democratic parties required.
National Legal Adviser Reuben Egwuaba said the affidavit would be submitted to INEC as part of each candidate’s nomination package, creating a formal legal record. He said the party’s position was that the electoral mandate secured under the NDC platform belonged to the institution, and that any elected official who chose to defect must also surrender the mandate the party’s sponsorship had secured, citing judicial precedents recognizing the central role of political parties in the electoral process.
Cleopas said the NDC was conceived as an institution designed to outlive its founders and remain ideologically coherent across generations, and that structural anti-defection provisions were essential to realizing that ambition in an environment where the precedent for treating parties as temporary conveniences had been firmly established by decades of Nigerian political practice.
