By Emmanuel Aziken, Political Editor & Henry Umoru
LAGOS — The Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, last night made a dramatic U-turn to clear embattled Governor of Bayelsa State, Timipreye Sylva for next year’s guber polls. The rulling party’s change of heart followed plea on Sylva’s behalf by his fellow PDP governors to President Goodluck Jonathan to endorse the governor. Sylva’s clearance is expected to be announced this morning.

The National Working Committee (NWC) of PDP it emerged yesterday, would hold another meeting today during which it would articulate the party’s position on sundry national issues including the Sovereign Wealth Fund, removal of oil subsidy among others. One senior party official said yesterday that the Sylva issue could come up.

Today’s meeting of the NWC would be the third meeting in four days and sources in the Sylva camp who were yesterday putting their hopes on a last minute reversal to include the governor in the race were disappointed.

Meanwhile, one of the leading contenders in the Bayelsa gubernatorial primary, Rep. Henry Dickson, yesterday urged governors pleading the case for Governor Sylva to draw back from putting pressure on President Goodluck Jonathan in the contest.

It had been believed that the NWC would use the opportunity of yesterday’s meeting to update its list of those it qualified to contest the gubernatorial primaries scheduled for November 19.

Governor Timipre Sylva of Bayelsa State

The party had on Tuesday listed Dickson alongside three others Oruta Justine Boloubo; Enai Christopher Fullpower and Kalango Michael Youppele as those prequalified to contest the primaries.

Meanwhile, sources in Abuja were yesterday marshalling reasons why disqualification from the primaries became the only option under consideration for the PDP Governor.

The Gubernatorial Appeals Committee it was learnt had ducked consideration of Sylva’s eligibility on the fact that it was not sufficiently equipped to consider the security issues that were raised against the Governor.

It was learnt that based on the sensitivity of the security reports that the party leaders resolved to bar the Governor from contesting the primaries.

One source yesterday said that it would have amounted to waving away the issues raised in the security report to allow the Governor contest on the basis of the fact that the Governor would automatically use the advantage of incumbency to win the primary.

“There is no way you can stop him at the primaries because he is as sure as winning the ticket given the number of statutory delegates and others he can count on to win the primary ticket. He is not the first Governor to be stopped after all, Chinwoke Mbadiniju was stopped by Obasanjo in 2003,” the source said yesterday.

Under the PDP guidelines members of the state executive council, House of Assembly and a number of state and local government officials are statutory delegates to a gubernatorial primary. Associates of the Governor were yesterday pushing their case saying that all that they were pleading for was to be included in the ballot.

Briefing newsmen yesterday in Abuja, Dickson flanked by the Director-General of his campaign organisation, Chief Fred Agbedi and other party leaders from Bayelsa State urged the nation’s Governors to step aside from interfering in the Bayelsa contest.

His plea followed the alleged move by some Governors on Tuesday night to prevail on President Jonathan to have Governor Sylva prequalified for the primary contest.

“I want to state that Mr. President is for the nation, he should be left alone on the local politics of Bayelsa state.”

“Some of us who are here were the same people who brought Sylva to office and we want him out of the place. We are tired of governance of deceit, signing of MOUs that are never implemented; making statements that are never implemented. We need someone with strength of character, let him leave Mr. President alone, let him use his performance to showcase himself,” he said.

“We have a formidable campaign team that has obtained political results in the past. Other aspirants do not have any known campaign team and we have a tested one with workable agenda and clear vision. You will soon see a political earthquake when we move into Bayelsa state with our campaign team which we will launch next week Monday in Yenagoa.

‘’What we are doing is to work to win support and confidence of the delegates. We shall match all the contestants with ideas for ideas; not violence for violence. We want to engage them on a debate and to justify what they have done in the past five years and how they deserve a renewal of the mandate.”

Asking all the aspirants to play by the rules, he emphasised that there was no need to embark on name dropping Mr. President on the matter, stressing that they should all go out to the field and convince the delegates to vote for them.

“No group should lobby or put pressure on Mr. President to endorse anybody. Let Bayelsa people choose who should be their leader. A situation whereby people focus their energy at blackmailing others is unfortunate”, especially on a man who is saddled with the responsibility of leading the country, is unfair and should not be encouraged at all,” he stressed.