WRITTEN BY EGBUNA AMUTA
Before the decline of the communist or extreme socialist ideologies since the mid eighties,

the world was enmeshed in global bi-polarity and cold war between the Communists and Capitalists. The two rival groups were then led by the United States of America and the defunct Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, USSR. Both were commonly referred to as Super Powers.
However, before the systematic collapse of communism and fall of the Berlin wall in Germany, there were other liberal or less hard line ideological inclinations in other parts of the world. They included Democratic Socialism, Welfarism and other variants of democracy practiced even in the Capitalist dominated Western World.
The difference between Communism and democratic system of government is that while the former is one-party dictatorship and totalitarian, the later gives room for multi-party system and political tolerance. For instance, the United States and Britain have many political parties with two major ones, which are either conservative or liberal in orientation. In USA, the Democratic Party is liberal while the Republicans are conservative, just as the Labour Party and the Tories are in Britain respectively.
Indeed, this arrangement is replicated in many European countries and other parts of the developed world. Politicians in the First and Second World belong to political parties because of their ideological convictions and principles; not for pecuniary reasons. Unfortunately, this is not the case in Nigeria, nay Africa and many other Third World Nations. 
In Nigeria, most politicians, nowadays, do not have ideological beliefs. They are rather more concerned with acquisition of power and self aggrandizement instead of the national or collective interests and welfare of the masses in whose trust they hold their offices. Little wonder they defect easily from one party to another without moral scruples. Though it is more pronounced in the present Republic, cross carpeting from one political party to another started in the defunct Western region of Nigeria before the country’s independence.
The then Action Group party, led by late Chief Obafemi Awolowo, triggered it off when it cajole parliamentarians who were elected on the platform of the National Council of Nigerian Citizens, NCNC of late Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe to defect to the Action Group. Since then, cross carpeting has become the norm in our country, especially in the present Fourth Republic.
Nigerian politicians of the  previous Republics were ideologically inclined, whether they were in the defunct NCNC, AG, NPC and NEPU of the First Republic; the NPP, UPN, NPN, PRP and GNPP of the Second Republic or the military created SDP and NRC of the aborted Third Republic.
In the current Fourth Republic, there is absolutely no ideological difference among the ninety-one registered political parties in the country. This explains why politicians defect easily from one party to another. Regrettably, this phenomenon is seriously undermining the interests of the electorate and impinging negatively on the moral values of the Nigerian society.
It also encourages corruption in the country as we are witnessing nowadays whereby it is apparent that the lever of investigations into corruption allegations against certain politicians are lowered by the government as soon as such suspects jump ship from their party into the ruling party. This, to say the least, is despicable and abhorrent to all decent minds.
It is unheard of that members of either the conservative or labour or democratic parties in the Western world defect easily from one to the other. This is because they are men of principles and ideological convictions.
In order to curtail this anomaly in Nigeria, the National Assembly should pass a Bill with stringent conditions before a politician could cross carpet from one party to another. This measure would help to sanitize the country’s political system.

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