NIGERIAN President Bola Tinubu denied on Thursday that there were plans to turn Africa’s largest country into a one-party state.

President Tinubu was hitting back at claims that he’s using state mechanisms to convince high-profile opposition politicians to defect to the governing party.

Several governors and federal lawmakers have left opposition parties in recent months to join Nigeria’s All Progressives Congress party. 

In his Democracy Day address, President Tinubu said: “At no time in the past, nor any instance in the present, and at no future juncture shall I view the notion of a one-party state as good for Nigeria.”

Dozens of youths, meanwhile, staged protests in the nation’s economic hub of Lagos, where they accused the government of bad governance and profiting off state resources at the expense of millions of citizens.

The weakening of the opposition membership is because President Tinubu has gone after opposition politicians with “compromised state apparatus,” according to Debo Ologunagba, spokesman for the main opposition party, the People’s Democratic Party (PDP).

Some governing party members have also criticised any move towards a one-party system.

Ali Ndume, a governing party senator, said: “One-party dominance is a sign of the death of democracy. We need to have a system that makes it difficult for people to decamp.”