INEC Starts the 100-Day Countdown to 2027, and Nigerians Just Want to Know If the Portal Will Be Home

Gist time. INEC has begun the final 100-day countdown to the 2027 elections, and tomorrow morning in Abuja it's holding a "world press conference" and national stakeholders' meeting. Yes, world. As if Brazil has been refreshing its browser all week, waiting for Professor Amupitan to speak.

The event is at the Bola Ahmed Tinubu International Conference Centre, at 10 a.m., invitation-only, and live on TV. So if you weren't invited, don't worry. You'll watch it on the couch, the way you watch every important thing in this country: with opinions and no vote.

INEC says it will update everybody on the voter register, candidate nominations, logistics, and "critical measures to protect the integrity of the process." Let me translate. Voter register: check your name before it checks out on you. Nominations: you will find out who is running. Logistics: will the materials arrive before the voters leave? Integrity measures: the big one, the one everybody's actually watching.

The guest list is a who's who: party leaders, security agencies, diplomats and civil society. Basically everyone with a seat and a statement.

The dates are set. The presidential and National Assembly elections will be held on 16 January 2027, and governorship polls follow on 6 February. And eighteen candidates are running for president, sixteen men and two women. Our ballot paper may need a table of contents.

The tension has already arrived, of course. The Action Alliance has accused INEC of ignoring a court judgment over its party leadership, and says the 2027 elections are "compromised from the source." The countdown hasn't even properly started, and somebody has already filed a "you cannot do that" letter. In a Nigerian election, the fine print has its own fine print.

One hundred days is enough time to cook jollof for a whole village, sit in Third Mainland Bridge traffic forty times, or fix a results portal. We are praying for the last one.

See you in January. PVC in one hand, power bank in the other.