The European Union (EU) has ruled out imposing sanctions on Nigerian political actors over reported cases of electoral violence ahead of the 2027 general elections, insisting that such action falls outside its responsibility as an international partner.
The EU Ambassador to Nigeria and ECOWAS, Gautier Mignot, stated this on Thursday, November 12, during an interview on Channels Television’s The Morning Brief.
Mignot said it was not appropriate for Nigeria to expect foreign partners to punish political and institutional actors over domestic electoral issues, stressing that the EU’s responsibility was to support the country’s democratic process.
“I was listening to that, and I was thinking: what kind of conception of Nigerian sovereignty is that if you expect from an international partner to sanction, give punishments, give good marks, bad marks to your political and institutional stakeholders? This is not our role,” said Mignot.
He explained that the EU was working with Nigerian institutions and civil society organisations to address concerns surrounding the elections, rather than taking over responsibilities that belonged to domestic authorities.
“Our role is to support the process, support the stakeholders, empower them, and this is what we are doing.
“This event where we spoke about political violence was organised by the National Human Rights Commission yesterday in Abuja with EU support, precisely to give a platform where these issues can be showcased and discussed, and with recommendations that were issued by the participants.”
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The ambassador disclosed that the EU was supporting civil society organisations to deploy 5,500 election observers during the polls.
He also recalled a recent exercise involving the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) and civil society groups, which simulated misinformation incidents, particularly those involving artificial intelligence, to assess how stakeholders would respond.
“A couple of weeks ago, we had an event with INEC, with civil society on a simulation of incidents of misinformation, especially through artificial intelligence, to see how stakeholders will react.
“So we are here to support the Nigerian stakeholders, not to take their place or to tell them what to do. This is our role as international partners, as we see it,” he added.
Mignot also dismissed comparisons between Nigeria’s electoral challenges and the circumstances that led to sanctions against Russia over its war in Ukraine.
He said the situations were fundamentally different in scale and nature, noting that sanctions were generally reserved for cases involving serious international aggression.
“Why are we sanctioning Russia? Why are we not sanctioning this or that individual in this or that state because he or she made an inflammatory speech?
“I mean, clearly you can see it’s not the same scale. It’s not in one case; it’s just internal to Nigeria. In other cases, it’s an attack against another country and against Europe itself,” he said.
He added that the EU could not impose sanctions on individuals across nearly 200 countries whenever their conduct fell short of democratic standards.
“This is the kind of cases where we use sanctions, not to sanction individuals in almost 200 countries of the world wherever someone is misbehaving, according to democratic standards. We can’t do that. This is not our role.
“So I think that this has to be understood because sometimes I think there are too high expectations or wrong expectations towards the EU and other partners,” the ambassador added. “Our role is to support the process, is to also give advice, give recommendations.”