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The National
Working Committee (NWC) of the Peoples Democratic Party has denied
complicity in the last month’s resignation of the party’s former
chairman, Okwesilieze Nwodo.

It, however,
refused to state clearly if the former chairman left N7 billion in the
coffers of the party when he was leaving office, as claimed.

Mr Nwodo’s
political adviser, Buhari Bala had in a recent media interview accused
the Working Committee members of complicity in the resignation of his
principal last month. He also claimed that Mr Nwodo left N7 billion in
the party’s account at the time he resigned.

The NWC, in a
statement by PDP national publicity secretary, Ahmed Alkali on Sunday
in Abuja, said that Mr Bala’s comment was jaundiced, ill-timed,
uninformed and in bad taste. “When we first heard of the story, we
could not believe that an aide to a former chairman of our party could
make such allegations. We therefore waited, thought that he must have
been quoted out of context. But having waited up to this time without
him retracting the statement, we have reasons to believe that the
action was deliberately taken,” Mr Alkali said.

“It is not the
tradition of the leadership to join issues with our past leaders or
those who worked with them. There is however need for us to make some
clarifications in this case in order to put the record straight and
avoid a situation where party members and especially Nigerians will be
led to believe a lie.” he said.

Intentional attack

The PDP spokesman
said the committee finds it strange that Mr Bala could choose this
period when the party had just concluded its presidential campaign at
the zonal level and about to commence the door to door campaigns in the
states, “to throw spanner on our collective efforts and determination
to achieve success for our party in the forthcoming general elections.”
Stating that the committee will not go into the details of the
circumstances that led to the resignation of Mr Nwodo, Mr Alkali,
however, recalled that the former chairman himself said he was quitting
based on the need to “maintain cohesion in the overall interest of the
party.” He added, “For an aide to the former chairman to turn around
and make unfounded and unsubstantiated allegations against the NWC of
the party speak of mischief and indeed a deliberate attempt to create
bad blood, hatred and odium between members of the NWC and the former
national chairman whom we hold in high esteem. “We want to put it on
record that since June 2010 when Okwesilieze Nwodo was elected the
national chairman of the PDP, he enjoyed the highest level of
cooperation from members of the National Working Committee who
supported every single programme that he introduced.

Mr Alkali dismissed
Mr Bala’s claim that Mr Nwodo left N7 billion in the PDP’s purse,
saying that he (Bala) was never in a position to know the state of the
party’s finances and therefore not qualified to speak on the matter.

The PDP spokesman asked Mr Bala to give clarification on the
allegations he raised, adding that this will determine the committee’s
next line of action.