- Eight Obi-Era Loans Totalling N127bn Still Outstanding —Anambra Govt
- Onanuga Dares Obi To Honour Quit Threat After ‘Facts, Figures’ On Anambra Debt
The Presidency has thrown down the gauntlet to Peter Obi, challenging the presidential candidate of the Nigeria Democratic Congress (NDC) to make good on his pledge to abandon his 2027 presidential campaign if claims that he left Anambra State with outstanding liabilities are substantiated.
Trouble started when Obi rejected claims by the Anambra State Government that his administration left behind inherited debts, including a ₦2bn ecological loan, contractor liabilities and unpaid salaries, gratuities and pensions.
Obi, in a statement on X on Tuesday, described the claims as “completely false,” saying his administration had cleared more than ₦35bn in historical gratuities and arrears and handed over the state without outstanding salary, pension or gratuity obligations.
He said, “We systematically liquidated historical gratuities and arrears dating back several years, amounting to over ₦35 billion.”
“At the point of handover, the state owed nothing in salaries, gratuities, or pensions, nor did we owe anything to any contractor for projects duly executed and certified,” he added.
Obi specifically disputed the claim concerning the ₦2bn ecological fund, explaining that the money was released shortly before he left office for the Oko/Umuchiana erosion crisis.
TheMatrix Newspaper reports that Obi had repeatedly maintained that he left the state in strong financial health, including claims that his administration cleared more than ₦35 billion in historical gratuities and arrears and did not leave outstanding salary, pension or gratuity obligations.
Responding to the latest allegations, Obi described the claims as “completely false” and challenged the Anambra Government to produce evidence to the contrary.
“If anybody can establish anything to the contrary, I will stop campaigning,” Obi said.
He specifically disputed the state’s claim concerning a ₦2 billion ecological fund, saying the money had been released shortly before he left office for the Oko/Umuchiana erosion crisis.
According to Obi, he refused to spend the money because it was tied to a specific project and instead left it for his successor.
“The money was therefore left 100 per cent intact in First Bank, in Account No. 2018779464, with a balance of over ₦2.13 billion,” he said.
He further argued that the money was separate from the more than ₦75 billion in savings he said his administration left behind.
Soludo Administration Enters The Fray
The latest confrontation has its roots in a broader and longstanding dispute between Obi and his successor, Governor Chukwuma Soludo, over the financial condition of Anambra when Obi handed over power in March 2014.
Anambra Commissioner for Finance, Izuchukwu Okafor, recently said the Soludo administration had not borrowed from any commercial bank since taking office but had continued to service loans inherited from previous administrations.
“It’s on record, you know, that this administration has not borrowed a kobo from any commercial bank since the inception of this administration,” Okafor said.
He explained that deductions were being made from the state’s Federation Account Allocation Committee funds to service loans obtained by previous governments, including administrations headed by Obi and Willie Obiano.
Okafor said the Soludo administration had reduced the state’s debt burden by more than 83 per cent and cleared several legacy liabilities, including unpaid contracts, gratuities and pension arrears.
The state government has now gone further.
Commissioner for Information and Value Reorientation, Law Mefor, said records from the Debt Management Office showed that eight external borrowings associated with the Obi administration remained outstanding.
According to the figures released by the state government, the combined balance stood at $92.35 million, equivalent to ₦127.37 billion at the official exchange rate as of June 30, 2026.
The loans, the government said, related to areas including malaria control, erosion management, healthcare, education, community development and agricultural value-chain development.
Mefor also accused the former governor of leaving verified salary, pension and gratuity obligations, including liabilities involving retired teachers and workers of the state’s Water Corporation.
He separately rejected Obi’s account of the alleged ecological fund, saying the First Bank account cited by the former governor was actually an “Internally Generated Revenue – Consolidated Revenue Account” and not an ecological fund account.
The government said there had been no ₦2 billion ecological-fund balance in the account dating back to 2011.
Reacting, President Bola Tinubu’s Special Adviser on Information and Strategy, Bayo Onanuga, challenged Obi after the Anambra government released details of the alleged liabilities.
“Peter Obi claimed he left Anambra with a clean slate of debt and even threatened to quit the presidential race if his claims were proven otherwise,” Onanuga said in a post on X.
He added that the former governor had now been “confronted with facts and figures” concerning alleged obligations to Water Corporation workers, teachers, pensioners and other beneficiaries.
Onanuga also questioned whether Obi would honour his earlier pledge to withdraw from the presidential race if the claims against his administration were established.
A Political Test Before 2027
The debt controversy has acquired added significance because Obi is now preparing for another presidential contest, this time as the NDC candidate.
His 2027 campaign rests heavily on his record as Anambra governor and his broader argument for prudent management of public resources.
That makes the latest allegations particularly consequential politically, even though the competing claims over the state’s historical liabilities remain disputed by the two sides.
Obi’s camp has said it is preparing a detailed response to the allegations. His media aide, Idris Zekeri Jnr, described the Presidency’s intervention as that of a “meddlesome interloper”, saying former officials who served under Obi were compiling responses to the state’s claims.
The Presidency, however, has turned Obi’s own words into the centrepiece of its challenge: if his assertion that he left Anambra without outstanding liabilities is disproved, will he actually withdraw from the 2027 presidential contest?
The answer now hangs on an increasingly heated battle over competing accounts of Anambra’s books, with the state government citing debt records and Obi insisting that his administration left behind substantial savings and no unpaid obligations.
For the moment, the dispute remains a clash of claims and documentary evidence rather than a settled finding on Obi’s personal political future.
