Political Parties and Pressure Groups

What you need to know

• A political party is an organised group of people sharing broadly common political aims who come together to contest elections and capture governmental power. The defining feature is the pursuit of office; this is what separates a party from every other organisation in politics.
• The functions of political parties are to select and present candidates, mobilise and educate voters, aggregate scattered demands into a programme, form and staff the government, provide organised opposition and scrutiny when out of office, recruit political leaders, and serve as a link between the governed and the government.
• A one-party system allows only one legal party, so the party and the state become fused; it is defended as promoting unity and speed of decision but it suppresses opposition and breeds dictatorship. A two-party system has two dominant parties alternating in power, which gives stability and a clear choice but narrows the range of opinion represented.
• A multi-party system has several parties with a realistic chance of winning seats. It represents diverse interests and makes dictatorship harder, but it often produces coalition governments, unstable administrations and confusion for the voter. Nigeria has operated a multi-party system in every civilian republic.
• First Republic parties were regionally based, which is the key to understanding the politics of that era: the Northern People's Congress drew on the North, the Action Group on the West, and the National Council of Nigeria and the Cameroons, later renamed the National Council of Nigerian Citizens, on the East. The Northern Elements Progressive Union was the main opposition within the North.
• In the Second Republic the registered parties included the National Party of Nigeria, which formed the government under Shehu Shagari, the Unity Party of Nigeria led by Obafemi Awolowo, the Nigerian People's Party led by Nnamdi Azikiwe, the Great Nigeria People's Party and the People's Redemption Party led by Aminu Kano.
• During the transition programme of the early 1990s the military government itself created and funded two parties, the Social Democratic Party and the National Republican Convention, an attempt to engineer a two-party system from above rather than let parties grow naturally.
• In the Fourth Republic the People's Democratic Party held the presidency from 1999 until 2015, when the All Progressives Congress, formed from a merger of opposition parties, won the presidential election. That was the first time in Nigeria's history that an incumbent president was defeated at the polls and handed over to the opposition.
• Nigerian parties are commonly criticised for weak ideological content, so that politicians cross from one party to another with little difficulty; for being personality-driven and funded by a few wealthy patrons; for undemocratic primaries; for ethnic and regional rather than national appeal; and for thuggery around elections.
• A pressure group is an organised group that seeks to influence government policy in favour of its members' interests without seeking to capture governmental power itself. It fights to shape decisions, not to make them.
• Interest or sectional pressure groups defend the material interests of their own members, such as the Nigeria Labour Congress, the Nigerian Medical Association, the Nigerian Bar Association, the Academic Staff Union of Universities, the Nigeria Union of Teachers and the Manufacturers Association of Nigeria. Promotional groups campaign for a cause that benefits more than their members, such as human rights and anti-corruption organisations.
• Pressure groups work through lobbying legislators and officials, petitions and delegations, press campaigns and publicity, sponsoring research and expert evidence at public hearings, funding sympathetic candidates, litigation, and in the case of labour unions, strikes and mass protest.
• The difference between a party and a pressure group lies in aim, scope and responsibility: a party seeks power while a group seeks influence; a party must have policies on everything while a group concentrates on a narrow field; a party contests elections while a group does not; and a party that wins is answerable to the whole electorate while a group answers only to its members.
• Pressure groups strengthen democracy by supplying government with expert information, representing interests between elections, checking abuse of power and widening participation. They weaken it when a wealthy or strategically placed minority distorts policy against the general interest, or when strikes paralyse essential services.