Typically, political parties aid the political discourse in civilized societies and help foster national unity. It does this through fielding popular candidates for elective positions, especially candidates with the ideology that binds the political party not minding the ethnic and religious affiliation of the candidates. Despite the differences in ideas of various political parties in a country, the single unifying factor is that they all strive for the entrenchment of democratic ideals and processes in the country. The paper examines how the apparent lack of political ideas amongst the plethora of political parties has become a cog in the wheel of national unity. The paper adopted exploratory research design, qualitative method of data collection and qualitative descriptive style of analysis. Anchoring our discourse on the post-colonial state theory, findings revealed that Nigeria’s political climate is ridden with several challenges which include, but are not limited to lack of good governance, high rate of insecurity, lack of internal party democracy, party cross carpeting, inter and intra-party crisis, political violence, lack of political ideology. Also, major political parties lack values or ideas which drive them; they resort to the mundane politics of individualism, corruption and disarticulation of the country along ethnic and religious lines, thereby posing a threat to national unity and integration. The paper recommends that until Nigerians can solve this fundamental problem of national unity through the formation and support of political parties that would have wide acceptance, national leadership and followers, we may remain in this circus of party regionalism and sectionalism.
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