Nigeria, Oct. 5 -- The Independent National Electoral Commission has begun its one-hundred-day countdown.

In the ceremonial life of a republic, few markers are as revealing as a countdown to an election. For three years, a government governs in the expansive territory of time; it explains, it pivots, it asks for patience, and it projects its ambitions into a future that always seems safely distant. But when the clock starts ticking in double digits, the future arrives. The era of projection ends, and the era of audit begins.

Governments always prefer to be judged by their intentions and their long-term trajectories.

Citizens, however, do not live in trajectories. They live in daily arithmetic.

A family does not buy food with the prom...