There is one political party in Nigeria that has never lost an election. It has no secretariat, no logo, no anthem, no manifesto and no ward chairman. Yet almost every Governor, Senator, Spokesperson and Member of the House of Representatives you can name has carried its card at some point. Its name is ‘Anywhere Belle Face.’ You know its members. One of them will condemn a government on Monday with holy anger, call it corrupt, and tell you that if you love your children you must vote for his party. By Friday, once his pocket is no longer favoured, he has forgotten every word and then jump back to defending the same government he called a disaster. His loyalty is not to a party or a principle, It is to his pocket.
Let me be clear on this, This is not an APC, PDP or ADC problem. It is a Nigerian political culture problem that cuts across every party in this country. To understand it you do not need a textbook. You only need to at the politicians around you.
Every foreign journalists now use Daniel Bwala to explain Nigerian politics. In 2022 he left the APC on what he presented as principle, saying he could not support a Muslim Muslim ticket. He joined the PDP and became a leading voice in Atiku Abubakar’s 2023 campaign and one of Bola Tinubu’s fiercest critics. On live television he alleged that Tinubu had created a militia to sway the election, and argued that even thirty years would not be enough for Tinubu to achieve anything meaningful. Then, Atiku lost, Tinubu won, and Bwala performed what Nigerians now call political yoga. He visited the President he had attacked, praised his vision, and by the end of 2024 he had been appointed a Special Adviser to the President on communication. The mouth that explained why Tinubu should never be President now explains why he must remain.
When Al Jazeera confronted him with his old clips in 2025, his reply, “I never said that,” became a national meme. Later he offered his most honest defence saying that those comments were politics and that the job of the opposition is to oppose, and half of Donald Trump’s cabinet once spoke against Trump. Is Bwala lying? Not entirely. He is telling us how the game is played. For many of our spokesmen, criticism is not conviction, It is a job description. When the job changes, the grammar changes.
The story of Reno Omokri follows a remarkably similar pattern. Reno Omokri a former Jonathan aide, he was Atiku’s most combative online soldier in 2023. He questioned Tinubu’s credentials, publicly called him a known drug lord, and took his campaign against him to the streets of London. In April 2023, on the Mic on Podcast, he said working with Tinubu was against his principles and not in his DNA.
By 2024 his timeline had changed completely, and he became one of the administration’s most energetic online defenders. In late 2025 the President nominated him as a non-career ambassador. Asked on Channels Television’s Politics Today in February 2026 about his old vow, he said, “I don’t work for Tinubu, I work for Nigeria. I said I would never work with him, it’s not in my DNA, and I kept my word. As an ambassador, I work for Nigeria.” On 20 October 2026, Mexico cleared him as Nigeria’s ambassador, with concurrent accreditation to Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua.
His argument is that he serves Nigeria, not Tinubu. Critics call it grammar, Supporters call it growth but the street calls it ‘Anywhere Belle Face.’
No discussion of political migration in Nigeria would be complete without Chief Femi Fani-Kayode, whose CV reads like a biography of defection. He left the PDP in 2013 to become a founding member of the APC, returned to the PDP in June 2014 to speak for Jonathan’s re-election, and from 2015 to 2021 savaged Buhari and the APC. In 2019 he wrote the line many Nigerians still remember. In his words he said, “I would rather die than join a filthy, rat infested sinking ship like the Almajiri People’s Congress. There can be no fellowship between light and darkness.” On 16 September 2021 he walked into the Aso Villa alongside Mai Mala Buni and Bello Matawalle to join that same darkness, saying it was time to put Nigeria first and build bridges. In late 2025 he too was nominated ambassador, and has since been posted to South Africa. For FFK, movement is never betrayal, it is always bridge building.
The same pattern is evident in the political journey of Shehu Sani who once embodied the activist who speaks truth to power. A founding member of the APC in Kaduna, he won the Kaduna Central Senate seat in 2015. In 2018, after falling out with Governor Nasir El-Rufai over a 350 million dollar World Bank loan his Senate debt committee refused to approve, he left. He lost the 2019 election on the PRP platform, later moved to the PDP, and spent years attacking the APC.
On 16 February 2025 he returned to the APC at Murtala Square, Kaduna, with thousands of supporters. His explanation was familiar: the circumstance behind their 2018 exit had changed, thanks to Governor Uba Sani’s reconciliation style. In May 2026 he won the APC primary for Kaduna Central ahead of 2027. As you can see, the Kaduna activist had come full circle.
These four are some of most visible faces of a system that now celebrates defection. Also, In June 2025, Governor Umo Eno of Akwa Ibom left the PDP for the APC. In October 2025, Peter Mbah of Enugu and Douye Diri of Bayelsa followed. In December 2025, Siminalayi Fubara of Rivers did the same. In 2026, Dauda Lawal of Zamfara, Kano’s Abba Kabir Yusuf of the NNPP and Caleb Mutfwang of Plateau were all reported to have joined the ruling party. The APC now says it controls 31 of the 36 states.
The National Assembly tells the same story. In May 2025, three Kebbi senators, Adamu Aliero, Yahaya Abdullahi and Garba Maidoki, left the PDP for the APC. In October 2025, five House members from Enugu crossed over in a single day.
Nor does the traffic flow only towards the ruling party. In March 2026, senators including Aminu Tambuwal, Ireti Kingibe and Enyinnaya Abaribe abandoned the PDP, Labour Party and APGA for the ADC as part of a new opposition coalition. In June 2026, House members from Oyo, Bauchi, Lagos and Osun scattered to the APM, ADC and Accord. In October 2026, nine members of the Zamfara House of Assembly walked out of the APC for the ADC. The direction changes with the season. The movement never stops.
What is revealing is not that they move but how they explain it. Nobody ever says, I am leaving because my party will not give me a return ticket. Instead, we hear that they “consulted widely with their people,” that they want to “bring development to the state,” or that there is “division in their party”. We all know what division means in Nigerian politics. It means: I was not given what I wanted.
First, our parties have no ideology. It was not always so. In the Second Republic, a voter knew that Obafemi Awolowo’s UPN stood for free education and welfare, and that Aminu Kano’s PRP spoke for the talakawa, the ordinary people of the North. Today, remove the logos from the APC, PDP and ADC manifestos and you cannot tell them apart; all promise jobs, an end to corruption and steady electricity. In Britain, Labour and the Conservatives at least disagree about the size of government. Here, when a man crosses over, he betrays no belief, because there was none to betray.
Second, our elections are ruinously expensive. Nomination forms in the big parties alone cost tens of millions of naira, and a governorship campaign runs into billions. Many borrow or spend their life savings, and in opposition, cut off from appointments, contracts and patronage, they go broke quickly. The easiest survival route is the party at the centre. “Aligning for development” is often just a polite phrase for survival.
Third, the law permits it in practice, even if not on paper. Sections 68(1)(g) and 109(1)(g) of the 1999 Constitution say a federal or state lawmaker who leaves the party that sponsored him should lose his seat, unless the move follows a division in that party or a merger. But which Nigerian party is not divided? The PDP has fought itself for a decade; the APC, Labour and the ADC all have their factions. Even when the excuse is thin, the presiding officer who must declare the seat vacant rarely does so when the defector is joining his own party. Governors are not covered at all; one can carry a whole state’s mandate to another party without legal consequence.
Fourth, we the voters encourage it. When a governor defects, we fill the stadium for his reception. We wear the uniform, we dance, we clap. We never ask about the insults he poured on his new party last year. We forgive quickly, partly because many of us are waiting for our own small defection, from poverty to small money.
What it costs Nigeria? The first cost is the value of your vote. Imagine you voted for a lawmaker named Peter because his party, Labour, promised to protect workers. Peter moves to the ADC and then to NDC much later for his selfish gain. You still have Peter, but you have lost Labour. You voted for a party and you got a pocket.
The second cost is governance. A governor who spends a year fighting inside his old party, six months negotiating his exit, six months organising receptions and another six months bargaining for a ticket in his new party, when exactly does he govern? This is why so many states have more welcome billboards than finished projects.
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The third cost is talent. A principled young Nigerian looks at this and concludes that politics is not about ideas but about stomach. So, he japa, and the country loses another person who could have changed it.
The fourth cost is democracy itself. Nigerians have seen this film before. In the early 2000s, PDP leaders boasted that their party would rule for sixty years. When nearly every governor and most lawmakers belong to one party, no one is left to check power. We risk becoming a one party state without a coup, not by force, but by defection. To be fair, Section 40 of the Constitution guarantees freedom of association, and some exits are genuinely principled. The problem is not that people move. It is that moving has become cost free, and that the mandate, which belongs to the voters, travels with the politician.
The response must be legal and cultural. Legally, we need an anti-defection regime that works, and India offers a model. Its Tenth Schedule, introduced in 1985, unseats a lawmaker who leaves the party that elected him, unless two thirds of his legislative party agree to a merger. Because Nigeria’s rules on vacating seats sit in the Constitution, the National Assembly should use the ongoing constitutional review to tighten them before 2027. Remove the vague division escape route, make loss of the seat automatic rather than dependent on a presiding officer, and require defectors to seek a fresh mandate under their new party. Let the people decide.
Culturally, we must stop celebrating defectors. The media should stop calling it strategic realignment and describe it plainly. Civil society should track every defector and publish what he said before beside what he says now. And voters must be willing to punish Anywhere Belle Face politicians at the polls in 2027, even when they arrive with bags of rice.
I am not writing to support any party; I have friends in the APC, PDP, Labour and ADC. I write because my heart is heavy and my hope is tired. I have watched young Nigerians stand for hours under the scorching sun for a party they believed in, only to see its flag pulled down months later at the same Government House. I have watched mothers who voted for change clap for the same men who mocked their suffering, simply because those men changed caps and shared wrappers. I have watched friends who once argued passionately about ideology fall silent and loose long standing friendships, because there was no ideology to argue about, only hunger and appointment.
If we continue like this, we may one day have all thirty-six governors and all one hundred and nine senators in one party and still have no light, no water, no jobs and no roads, because the same men will keep changing uniforms while the country remains naked.
The Anywhere Belle Face politician has no principles, only pockets. Until we make defection costly, he will keep moving, and we the people will keep paying with our sweat and our broken trust.
So, before 2027, look your representative in the eye and ask him: will you stay in your party if you lose your ticket? Ask your governor, if no party offers him anything, will he still serve you? When a man comes to your ward announcing he has decamped for development, ask him to show you the development he brought while he was in hisold party. If we do not ask these questions now, we will watch the same film again in 2027. And this time, we will have no one to blame but ourselves.
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