The Nigeria Democratic Congress (NDC) has unveiled a new internal political policy requiring all its candidates to sign legally binding affidavits committing them to surrender their electoral mandates if they defect from the party after winning office.
The NDC move, announced in Abuja by the party’s National Chairman, Senator Cleopas Zuwoghe, is aimed at strengthening party discipline and curbing the growing culture of political defections that has become a recurring decimal in Nigeria’s democracy.
Speaking during the official signing ceremony, Zuwoghe described the initiative as a major departure from conventional political practices, insisting that elected offices secured on a party’s platform belong primarily to the party, not to individual officeholders.
According to him, the NDC was founded to build an enduring political institution rather than serve as a temporary vehicle for personal ambitions.
He said the party’s leadership carefully studied successful democratic systems around the world before introducing measures to protect party ideology, loyalty, and institutional continuity.
“Our goal is to build a political party that will outlive its founders and become a lasting institution for future generations. We cannot achieve that if elected officials freely abandon the platform that gave them victory,” he said.
Under the new arrangement, any NDC candidate seeking elective office must execute an indemnity agreement and a sworn affidavit before being cleared for nomination.
The party maintains that any elected official who chooses to leave the NDC after winning an election must relinquish the office obtained through the party’s platform.
Providing the legal basis for the policy, the party’s National Legal Adviser, Reuben Egwuaba, argued that electoral victories are fundamentally tied to political parties.
