A Comparative Review of the European Union Observation Mission’s Reports on the Nigerian 2019 and 2023 General Elections

Abstract:

One of the means of knowing if a democracy is making progress is through successful successive elections and one of the ways to gauge the success of an election is to look into the reports of the various observation missions and groups that observed and monitored that election. The European Union Election Observation Mission (EU EOM) is one of the credible observation missions that have monitored Nigerian elections since Nigeria returned to civil rule in 1999. The reports of the Mission have helped to show the good, the bad, and the worst of the Nigerian brand of electoral process. Unlike the observation reports of the international organizations that Nigeria belongs to like the Commonwealth, the African Union and the ECOWAS, the EU EOM report is usually devoid of the element of a "progress report" as enunciated by Kelly (2012), the reports are more factual and more relatable. The paper submits that for a democracy to make genuine progress through its electoral process, its election needs to be observed by factual electoral observation groups in the mold of EU EOM, despite the expected claim of foreign interference by the indicted party in an election.