The leadership of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) is looking for a means of ensuring that it does not lose the upcoming governorship election in Kogi State by fielding of the wrong candidate.

While some members of the party favour open primary for the choice of the standard-bearer, some others are said to be mapping out strategies to guarantee that the current Kogi State governor, Idris Wada, emerges as the PDP candidate for the poll once for a second term by whatever means.

Wada is facing a stiff challenge from Jibrin Isa, otherwise called Echocho, for the party’s governorship ticket.

On Thursday, September 10, 2015, all organs of the party, including the National Working Committee (NWC) and the PDP Governors’ Forum (PDPGF), led by Governor Olusegun Mimiko, met separately in Abuja with the agenda of the various meetings said to be centred on ensuring that the party primary slated for Monday does not end in a fiasco for the party.

CEOAFRICA source gathered in confidence that Echocho has been under intense pressure to drop his gubernatorial ambition once again so that Wada can be given the ticket to face the candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Abubakar Audu.

The pressure by the party leadership on Echocho to back down, it was it gathered, comes against the background of fears that the incumbent governor might lose the primary to him, which might not augur well for the image of the party in the state.

For Wada and the PDP, losing to Echocho may rub off negatively on the image of the party and dim its chances as the party and not the governor might be seen as a failure for the last four years the governor has held sway in the state.

The APC has hinged its campaign on what it perceived as a poor first outing of Wada as governor in the last four years, asking the people to vote him out.

Echocho had won the PDP primary in 2011 but was dumped by the party on the ground that his ticket was no longer valid.

It was gathered that the governors who met at the Ondo State Governor’s Lodge, Abuja, were strategizing on how to prevail on Echocho to forgo his ambition and not contest the primary scheduled for Monday.

A member of the party’s NWC who pleaded anonymity confirmed that the governors were worried about their colleague and were putting pressure on Echocho to step down.

The NWC member had confirmed that the “party leadership is in dilemma over the situation, that if the primaries hold today the governor might be defeated.”