By Henry Umoru
ABUJA—THE leadership of the ruling Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, was, yesterday, thrown into confusion following disagreements over the composition of the presidential screening committee.

Several meetings at different levels, weekend, failed to produce any acceptable option. The  party hierarchy wants to get credible and acceptable persons as chairman and members given the intense tension being generated by the presidential aspirants and their supporters.

At the time of this report, members of the National Assembly Screening Committee billed to leave for their various states to carry out their assignments that would have commenced yesterday, were stranded because the National Secretariat was still harmonizing the two lists produced believed to be causing tension within the camps of all the stakeholders.

Already all presidential aspirants on the party’s platform have been summoned to an emergency meeting January 3, 2011. The aspirants are President Goodluck Jonathan, former Vice President Atiku Abubakar and Mrs Sarah Jibril as well as the Directors_ General of their Campaign Organizations.

The meeting will among others, address the unfolding scenario surrounding the composition of the Presidential Screening Panel and preparations for the party’s primaries slated for January 13, 2011.

On another side of the raging confusion is the plot by the governors to nominate members to the screening committee.

According to the PDP electoral guidelines for the Primary Elections, “there shall be a Presidential Screening Committee appointed by the National Executive Committee on the recommendation of the National Working Committee of the party, whose sole responsibility shall be to screen presidential aspirants.