Nigeria, Nov. 14 -- On Thursday, 12 November, two incidents with red flags for the 2027 elections emerged. In London, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) Chairman, Professor Joash Amupitan was detained in his car by a group of protesters. In Lagos, thugs invaded a meeting venue, where supporters of the National Democratic Party (NDC) gathered for a town hall.

The Lagos and London incidents are not the same, but together they portend an increasingly fraught electoral season. They are early indicators of where we are headed if nothing is done to arrest them. The grievance in London concerned duplicate entries, AI-generated photographs and fake polling units in INEC's preliminary voters' register. For this, the protesters c...