Presidential election result will be ready in 48 hours, says Jega

The Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission, Prof. Attahiru Jega, on Friday expressed the confidence that the result of Saturday’s presidential election will be ready within 48 hours.

Jega gave the assurance at a joint press conference he addressed with the Director General of the National Youth Service Corps, Brigadier General Johnson Olawumi, in Abuja.

The INEC chairman expressed further confidence that in the states, INEC would be able to get full result within 24 hours.

The Peoples Democratic Party, the All Progressives Congress and 12 other political parties are fielding candidates for the election.

Jega‎ said the commission is making effort to ensure that results are released much earlier than in 2011. He, however, denied the allegations that a purported master key for the commission’s data base has been compromised.

According to him, the data base of the commission does not use master key but sort code for encryption and decryption.

 Jega added that only the producers of the data base infrastructure have the sort code.

 According to him, the company, Act Technologies Limited, was approved by the Federal Executive Council.

He denied that the company was blacklisted by INEC as he noted that the process of awarding the contract to the company passed all required due process.

 “It is regrettable that people can say all sorts of things and get away freely with it. ‎ “It is a last minute attempt to undermine the credibility of the elections.” He said.