Politics and its praxis in Nigeria has had a chequered history and despite its seeming openness to the general public it is still a puzzle and arcane to the outsider. This study thus examined Party Politics and Internal Democracy: The Dilemma of Political Development in Nigeria. The paper made use of secondary source of data as the main source of data used in this paper. This method is adopted due to its intrinsic values. The secondary sources adopted in this study includes materials like newspapers, magazines, textbooks, internet, journals, government publications, official documents etc. which helped us to gain an insight into party politics and internal democracy in the country and elsewhere. Content analysis as a method of investigation is adopted in this study. This involves reading meaning into materials that are collected for the purpose of achieving reliable and verifiable conclusion. The paper affirmed that political parties in Nigeria today are bereft of the much needed internal democracy especially with recourse to candidate selection. The overbearing and domineering attitude of political incumbents and the so called godfathers was as well identified. It was recommended among other things that all political parties should have a clearly defined philosophy and ideologies that will enable them conform to the dictates of their manifestoes. That political party should be funded by contributions from party members. That government should look into the urgent need to reform political parties in Nigeria with a view to sanitizing the democratic process to ensure the survival and growth of hard-earned democracy and political development.

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