Posted by From LUCKY NWANKWERE, Abuja on
With the party's national convention only four days away, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) governors may have perfected plans to check the influence of former President Olusegun Obasanjo in the emerging new national executive committee.
•To endorse consensus candidate on Thursday
With the party's national convention only four days away, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) governors may have perfected plans to check the influence of former President Olusegun Obasanjo in the emerging new national executive committee.
The governors on Monday held a two-hour breakfast meeting with President Umaru Yar'Adua in the Presidential Villa, Abuja during which they intimated him of their decision to screen all the aspirants and endorse their own candidates ahead of the convention.
They had earlier fine-tuned their strategy when they met at the Kwara State governor's lodge in Abuja on Sunday night, setting up a seven-man screening panel, headed by Governor Rotimi Amaechi of Rivers State, to handle that assignment.
Members of the panel are drawn from the six geo-political zones of the country and include governors Gabriel Suswan (Benue), Gbenga Daniel (Ogun), Sullivan Chime (Enugu), Emmanuel Uduaghan (Delta), Mohammed Goje (Gombe) and Namadi Sambo (Kaduna).
The panel is expected to conclude its assignment by Thursday and make its consensus candidates known by Friday, with a view to having the governors and their various delegates vote en bloc at the convention the following day.
After Sunday night's meeting at the Kwara Governor's Lodge, Governor Bukuola Saraki, who doubles as chairman of the Governors Forum, had said the meeting was convened to ensure smooth and peaceful convention on Saturday.
He said: 'We discussed the forthcoming PDP convention, which is coming up on Saturday. We consulted generally and we are also meeting with the president to also deliberate and discuss the way forward.
'We intend to come back here on Thursday to take a firm decision on the way forward, to ensure that we have smooth convention, the one that will make the party stronger, one that will lead the way in electoral processes."
There were speculations that the governors were rooting for the former Senate president, Chief Anyim Pius Anyim as the party's next national chairman in a bid to checkmate what an aide of one of the governors described as an overbearing influence of ex-President Obasanjo, who is supporting former Ebonyi State governor, Dr. Sam Egwu.
The governors Forum will meet on Thursday to endorse the candidates selected by the screening committee and thereafter inform the president of their choice.
Meanwhile, a Federal High Court will today rule on the suit filed by some PDP members to stop the March 8 national convention.