For years, American institutions helped Nigerian civic groups train election observers, track political violence and challenge false information. As Nigeria approaches its 2027 elections, the organizations that developed that expertise face a different question: how much of the work can they sustain with less financial and technical support?
Dauda Garuba, director of the Centre for Democracy and Development (CDD West Africa), sees the change as part of a broader shift in American foreign policy. But he also believes it invites an uncomfortable assessment of Nigeria’s elections.
“So much has been invested in the past that has not produced matching results,” he said.
Founded in 1997, CDD combines research, training and advocacy on democracy across West Africa. A recent analysis published by the organization argues that the 2027 elections will test whether democratic institutions can deliver meaningful improvements in citizens’ lives.
Garuba’s assessment captures one concern among Nigerian civil society leaders: what years of international assistance have achieved. Another is what could happen if that assistance continues to shrink.
Bukola Idowu, executive director of Kimpact Development Initiative, or KDI, said reduced American support threatens the activities through which civic groups scrutinize elections and demand accountability. The effects, he said, extend beyond budgets to the cooperation that helped organizations develop their methods.
“The funding cuts and changing U.S. foreign policy priorities have affected not only the resources available to Nigerian organisations but also opportunities for technical cooperation, institutional learning and cross-border collaboration,” he said.
Across interviews with three civil society leaders, a complicated picture emerges. American partnerships helped establish observation systems, train practitioners and expand public scrutiny of elections. Yet institutional failures and distrust persisted. Preparations for 2027 are forcing Nigerian organizations to consider how they will finance their work, what they can manage independently and why stronger technical capacity has not consistently produced better elections.
The relationship extends beyond Washington’s dealings with the Nigerian government. American nongovernmental institutions—including the National Democratic Institute, the International Republican Institute and the International Foundation for Electoral Systems—have worked with civic groups, political parties and electoral authorities. Government agencies, foundations and other donors have financed different parts of that cooperation.
Financial assistance has supported operations. Technical assistance has helped develop the skills, methods and systems behind them. The knowledge can survive a grant, but putting it to work across a country requires continued resources.
The policy shift began early in President Trump’s second term. On January 20, 2025, he ordered a 90-day pause in new obligations and disbursements of foreign development assistance pending a review. Agencies were instructed to determine which programs should continue, change or end, with assistance required to advance the administration’s foreign policy.
Idowu describes the subsequent decline in democracy assistance as the most significant difference from the 2019 and 2023 election cycles. Garuba cautions against treating it principally as a policy directed at Nigeria. He connects it to priorities articulated during Trump’s campaign and a wider international turn toward populist policies.
Neither account establishes that disagreements between Abuja and Washington over security or counterterrorism caused particular reductions. Their concern is the effect of changing American priorities on partnerships developed over many years.
CDD’s experience offers a practical example of what those partnerships helped build.
Garuba said NDI support enabled the organization to strengthen its work on misinformation, disinformation and hate speech. Its activities included fact-checking, examining deepfakes and training government agencies, including the National Orientation Agency.
He credits that work with helping defuse false information capable of triggering conflict. It also illustrates how electoral assistance has expanded: civic organizations now scrutinize the information citizens encounter before voting, alongside the conduct of polling and counting.
At KDI, American cooperation has included monitoring threats to voters before election day.
An IFES account of the 2020 governorship elections in Edo and Ondo identifies KDI as a subaward recipient under its election violence program. Community monitors tracked incidents and warning signs, while KDI shared information with electoral officials, security agencies and peace advocates. IFES provided technical assistance to expand monitoring of violence against women.
The work depended on Nigerian relationships. KDI engaged traditional authorities and local peace structures, mapped areas at risk and supplied assessments intended to inform preventive action. A mobile application helped collect incident reports and shorten the time needed to review and verify them, according to IFES.
Idowu also described cooperation with IFES on electoral justice, including attention to post-election litigation and the judiciary’s responsibility to protect electoral integrity.
These activities grew within a longer history of American institutional engagement.
Ugochukwu James Okpe, regional general secretary of the West African Civil Society Forum, recalls Project Swift Count before the 2011 elections as an early example of cooperation around independent verification. Okpe is also a former convener and current member of the Nigeria Civil Society Situation Room.
An NDI presentation from 2011 describes Swift Count as a joint initiative of Nigerian organizations combining statistical sampling with mobile phone reporting. Participants included the Federation of Muslim Women’s Associations in Nigeria, Justice Development and Peace/Caritas, the Nigerian Bar Association and the Transition Monitoring Group. Reports from sampled polling units provided a benchmark for checking official results.
By 2015, those methods were an established part of citizen observation. NDI’s international mission worked closely with the Transition Monitoring Group, a coalition of more than 400 organizations. TMG deployed over 4,000 observers and used a representative sample of 1,507 polling units for its parallel vote tabulation, also called a quick count.
That election produced Nigeria’s first peaceful presidential transfer between political parties. It supplied a reference point for what democratic competition could achieve and expectations that subsequent elections would improve.
Christopher Fomunyoh, then NDI’s senior associate and regional director for Central and West Africa, described the institution’s approach in congressional testimony in 2016.
“NDI’s work has helped support Nigerian efforts to advance democratic governance and electoral processes that reflect the will of the people,” he testified. He identified support from American government agencies, the National Endowment for Democracy, the Ford Foundation and Britain’s development agency.
In 2019, American-supported citizen observation generated another extensive independent record. With NDI assistance, Yiaga Africa deployed 3,030 observers to a representative sample of 1,515 polling units. According to NDI, observers transmitted 33,000 coded text messages containing nearly 550,000 data points.
The official vote shares for the two leading presidential candidates fell within Yiaga’s estimated ranges. Observers also documented late openings and questions surrounding cancelled results. Agreement on the overall figures did not resolve every concern about the process.
The 2023 elections exposed that distinction again.
NDI and IRI’s USAID-supported observation mission recorded logistical, technological and communication failures, political violence and instances of vote manipulation. Its final assessment acknowledged improvements but concluded that the elections fell short of citizens’ reasonable expectations. Participation in the national contests was only 27 percent of registered voters, according to the report.
Idowu described the period between 2019 and 2023 as one of substantial change: a new electoral law, wider deployment of technology, greater citizen observation and increased political competition. Those developments coexisted with operational failures, weak accountability and distrust.
“These experiences demonstrate both the value of international cooperation and the need for sustained domestic institutional reform,” he said.
Garuba’s criticism presses further. In his view, elections’ failure to deliver sufficient change can furnish an argument against continued investment. He offered that as an assessment of Nigeria’s electoral record, rather than evidence explaining a specific donor decision.
The question exposes a limit of technical assistance. Better observation can produce stronger evidence. It cannot compel authorities to implement recommendations, political parties to abandon intimidation or institutions to earn public confidence.
Okpe believes Nigerian institutions must take greater responsibility for what follows. Years of assistance have reached electoral authorities, policymakers, political parties and civil society, he said. The expertise acquired should help them navigate a period of reduced support.
He also challenges a picture in which knowledge moved only into Nigeria.
His example is Situation Room: organizations pooling information, assessing developments together and responding to emerging electoral problems. The coalition dates its establishment to 2010, ahead of the 2011 elections, when civic groups sought better coordination and faster responses.
Okpe described it as a Nigerian initiative that attracted interest and adoption elsewhere. For him, its survival across successive elections demonstrates the institutional knowledge local practitioners have developed.
Garuba likewise sees election observation as a field of shared international experience. Recent American presidential elections, particularly the two that brought Trump to power, have encouraged Nigerians to scrutinize a system some previously regarded as largely immune to error, he said.
That assessment complicates the conventional account of assistance. Nigerian organizations can draw on American expertise while questioning American democratic practice and contributing lessons from their own experience.
Some institutional cooperation has continued. NDI reported assisting Yiaga during Anambra’s 2025 governorship election with sampling, observer recruitment checks and reporting systems. The observation effort formed part of an EU-funded initiative, showing how American technical involvement can operate within arrangements financed by other partners.
But continued cooperation in one election does not establish the resources available for a national contest.
Idowu said Nigerian organizations were adapting programs, strengthening local partnerships and exploring alternative funding. He warned that the reduction comes as democratic institutions across West Africa face pressure from military takeovers, restrictions on civic activity and declining public confidence.
“At a time when democracy in our region requires stronger international solidarity and institutional support, we are witnessing a reduction in some of the very partnerships that helped strengthen democratic accountability,” he said.
For CDD, the concern also reaches beyond the mechanics of an election. Its recent analysis argues that citizens judge democracy through security, opportunity, public services and accountable institutions. A credible vote matters within that larger expectation that government should improve their lives.
The skills developed through years of cooperation remain in Nigerian hands. Whether organizations can deploy them at the necessary scale is less certain. Whether the findings will produce reform is a question that earlier elections have left unresolved.
Idris Mohammed is a Ph.D. student at the University of Alabama concentrating in Journalism & Creative Media and a fall Fulcrum Fellow.
