• As NIPSS seeks review of political parties’ code of conduct

From Romanus Ugwu and Magnus Eze, Abuja

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The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has said it will not solicit or accept any financial assistance from any country to conduct the 2019 general elections, revealing it will, today, inaugurate a project committee with the mandate to determine the budget for the conduct of the elections.
Chairman of the electoral body, Professor Mahmood Yakubu, who made the disclosure while hosting the ambassador of the United States of America to Nigeria, Stuart Symington yesterday, said the commission can only come out with a budget for the election after arriving at the election project as contained in its new strategic plan.
Yakubu further said the Commission is perfecting arrangements to conduct the rerun for the Anambra Central Senatorial election before the governorship poll, just as he assured that Nigerian government  will foot all the bills for the conduct of the 2019 general elections since, according to him, the election is a sovereign issue.
Allaying the fears of any interference from the outside world, Prof Yakubu reassured that the Commission would conduct the election to the satisfaction of Nigerians who would determine their leaders through their votes.
He described the meeting with the American ambassador to Nigeria as a normal process, adding that it only dwelt on the strides recorded by the commission in conducting a free and fair election in 2015, despite the tensed situation.
While stressing that the meeting had nothing to do with interference in Nigeria’s election, he said: “We never asked for assistance from any country to conduct our elections. We are very clear in our mandate that elections are sovereign issues. INEC can never go to any country to ask for help to conduct elections in Nigeria.”
Meanwhile, the need for urgent review of the Code of Conduct of political parties to entrench best practices and moral standards for a conducive environment for effective political system has been stressed.
This formed part of the proclamation at a conference on “Political party supremacy and the dynamics of parliamentary autonomy,” organised in Abuja, by the political parties’ leadership and policy development centre of the National Institute for Policy and Strategic Studies (NIPSS), Kuru, near Jos, Plateau State.
Participants at the conference, drawn from the National and State Assemblies, political parties, academia, media, civil society organisations and other stakeholders, decried the serious tension generated in the polity by party supremacy and parliamentary autonomy.
The conference, therefore, urged the political parties to initiate capacity building programmes for their officers, particularly, in the areas of internal party democracy, running professional political parties and conflict management in order to achieve the supremacy of the party without undermining parliamentary autonomy.
A statement by the Rapporteur General, Prof. Habu Galadima, also called on all elected parliamentarians “to provide dynamic balance among their party interests, interest of the parliament, public interest and national interest.”