Moore says America is “Watching Closely.” It has been, for 25 years and never once intervened.
“We’re certainly going to be watching these results and how these elections unfold and how they’re executed,” US Congressman Riley Moore told reporters over the weekend, responding to a question about whether Washington could do more to support credible elections in Nigeria ahead of the 2027 general election.
“That’s something that myself and the administration are going to be paying very close attention to.”
It’s easy to hear that as a fresh American pledge, but it isn’t. The United States has quietly observed every Nigerian general election since the country’s 1999 return to civilian rule, and in all that time, it has never once intervened. That isn’t incidental; it’s the rule the entire process runs on.
What’s actually worth asking about Moore’s comments is whether the bill he’s tied them to is the first sign that the rule might be changing.
The US doesn’t send government officials to monitor Nigerian polls directly. Since 1999, that role has belonged to two congressionally funded organisations working jointly, namely: the National Democratic Institute (NDI) and the International Republican Institute (IRI). This is funded through USAID and the State Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor.
Every one of their mission operates under the Declaration of Principles for International Election Observation. This is a code that requires strict impartiality and non-interference. When Nigerian institutions invite them, they only watch the vote and the count and the results transmission, issue a preliminary statement within days, and follow up with a longer final report and a list of recommendations.
After that, the mission ends. No funding is conditioned on Nigeria acting on any of it. No consequence is attached to ignoring the findings.
Run the tape and take into consideration these various elections.
2015: Goodluck Jonathan conceded to Muhammadu Buhari before full results were even in, the first peaceful transfer of power to an opposition party since 1999. Observers called it credible despite a six-week postponement tied to the Boko Haram insurgency.
2019: The observers also documented state broadcaster coverage favouring the incumbent and journalist harassment in contested states. Recommendations were filed; however, once again, little was implemented.
2023: This time, a 40-person NDI/IRI delegation concluded the election “fell well short of citizens’ legitimate and reasonable expectations,” citing logistical failures, contested results transmission, and disenfranchisement of marginalised voters.
Despite the Electoral Act 2022 reforms that were supposed to fix exactly those problems. Trust in INEC had already fallen from 31 per cent in 2020 to 23 per cent in 2022, before that vote was even held.
This isn’t a failure of the observers but the design. NDI and IRI have no authority beyond publishing what they saw because there’s no funding, no diplomatic penalty, no re-run of a rigged process attached to a bad report. Nigeria can adopt every recommendation or none of them, and the relationship with Washington will continue unaffected either way. Twenty-five years of “watching closely” has meant exactly that and nothing more.
For context: the European Union runs an identical model in Nigeria. Invited observers, detailed reports, zero enforcement. Same structural story, different flag.
What makes Moore’s comments worth a second look
Taken alone, Moore’s “watching closely” language might sound like a continuation of this exact 25-year pattern. But he tied it to something the NDI/IRI tradition has never had: an appropriations bill that would withhold 50 percent of US assistance to Nigeria until Washington certifies the government has taken “effective steps” to curb religious violence and prosecute attackers. That’s not observation anymore, it’s action.
If that bill becomes law and survives to 2027, it would mark the first time in a long time that American attention to Nigeria’s governance came with an actual lever attached, rather than a report nobody was obligated to read.
Where does this leave Nigerians?
That possible shift arrives at a moment of real public frustration. For 25 years, the American relationship to Nigerian elections has been defined by one rule: watch, don’t touch. The result has been a remarkable record of documented, repeated, unresolved problems. Whether Smith-Moore’s bill actually breaks that rule or just adds louder language to the same toothless tradition is the real question worth pondering as 2027 approaches.
