The dispute over the financial legacy of Peter Obi’s eight-year administration in Anambra State has moved to the centre of the 2027 presidential campaign.
The Presidency yesterday challenged the former governor to honour a pledge to stop campaigning if evidence emerges that he left the state with outstanding liabilities.
The latest exchange was triggered by figures released by the Anambra State Government showing eight external loans which it said were contracted during Obi’s tenure and still had an outstanding balance of $92.35 million, equivalent to about N127.37 billion as of June 30.
Obi, presidential candidate of the Nigeria Democratic Congress (NDC), was Anambra governor between 2006 and 2014.
He maintains that he left the state without outstanding salaries, pensions, gratuities or contractor liabilities and that he liquidated more than N35 billion in inherited arrears before leaving office.
The dispute has also revived a longstanding controversy over what Obi handed over to his successor, Willie Obiano, in March 2014.
These include claims of over N75 billion in savings and investments, plus a separate N2.13 billion that Obi said was set aside for erosion control
Special Adviser to President Bola Ahmed Tinubu on Information and Strategy, Bayo Onanuga, said on his verified X handle: ‘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.
‘Now, the Anambra government has confronted him with facts and figures showing he owed Water Corporation workers, teachers, and pension and gratuities, and had also borrowed for frivolous things.
‘The ball is back in his court. Will he follow through on his threat by quitting the race?’
The Presidency’s intervention followed the release by the Anambra Government of details of the loans it attributed to the Obi administration.
The challenge places the former Anambra governor’s own words at the centre of the controversy.
Obi had invited the state government or anyone else to produce evidence showing that he left debts or unpaid obligations.
‘If anybody can establish anything to the contrary, I will stop campaigning,’ he declared.
The Presidency’s position is that the documents released by the government amount to evidence contrary to Obi’s claim.
Obi’s camp, however, has rejected the attempt to turn the dispute into a test of his presidential candidacy.
The Anambra government, through Commissioner for Information and Value Reorientation, Law Mefor, said that eight external borrowings associated with projects under the previous administration remained outstanding.
According to the figures released by the state, the original value of the eight facilities was $123,771,179.30, while the outstanding balance as of June 30, 2026, was $92,353,182.
Using the official exchange rate, the government put the outstanding balance at N127,372,049,434.12.
The loans listed by the state were for programmes covering malaria control, agriculture, healthcare, education, community development, erosion management and agricultural value-chain development.
They include the Malaria Control Booster Project; Third National Fadama Development Project; Health System Development Project II; Malaria Control Booster Project (Additional Financing); State Education Programme Investment Project (SEPIP); Community and Social Development Project; Nigeria Erosion and Watershed Management Project (NEWMAP); and Value Chain Development Project.
The largest outstanding balances listed were $37.34 million for SEPIP and $34.86 million for NEWMAP.
The state said the outstanding balance on SEPIP was about N51.50 billion, while NEWMAP had an outstanding balance of about N48.08 billion.
Other balances included about N6.18 billion for the Malaria Control Booster Project, N6.03 billion for the Third National Fadama Development Project, N2.82 billion for Health System Development Project II, N4.37 billion for additional malaria financing, N5.11 billion for the Community and Social Development Project and N3.28 billion for the Value Chain Development Project.
The figures released by the state are consistent with the broad position that Anambra continues to carry external debt associated with projects approved during or around the period of previous administrations.
The Debt Management Office maintains records of sub-national debt stocks, although determining precisely which administration should politically be credited or blamed for every outstanding balance requires examination of the loan agreements, disbursement dates and repayment schedules.
The Anambra government itself acknowledged that borrowing is not necessarily evidence of financial mismanagement.
Mefor said no government could realistically operate without borrowing and argued that loans used for productive projects could be justified.
‘Debt, especially for bankable projects and human capital development, is justifiable,’ he said in the statement.
The government’s argument is therefore not simply that Anambra borrowed money, but that Obi’s assertion that he left the state without debt or financial liabilities is inconsistent with the loan records it has published.
The distinction is important because several of the facilities were multilateral development projects rather than conventional commercial-bank loans.
World Bank documentation, for example, shows that SEPIP was a results-based programme involving Anambra, Bauchi and Ekiti states, with financing tied to education-sector reforms and specified performance indicators.
Consequently, the outstanding balances do not by themselves establish that the entire amount was drawn down by Obi before he left office in March 2014.
This point has become part of the debate following an analysis circulated by Mayowa Balogun, who argued that some of the facilities were disbursed after Obi had left office.
He cited the Community and Social Development Project and Value Chain Development Project as examples, arguing that disbursements occurred under subsequent administrations.
He also questioned how much of the larger facilities had actually been disbursed to Anambra before Obi left office.
The distinction between loan approval, loan signing, disbursement and outstanding balance is therefore central to the controversy.
Obi: I left no unpaid obligations
Obi has maintained that the figures being presented by the Soludo administration do not prove that he left Anambra with unpaid liabilities.
He said his administration inherited more than N35 billion in historical gratuities and arrears and systematically liquidated them.
‘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,’ Obi said.
He also maintained that his administration left more than N75 billion in savings and investments for the succeeding administration.
The former governor separately addressed the disputed N2.13 billion said to have been released for the Oko/Umuchiana erosion crisis.
According to Obi, the money arrived about three months before the expiration of his administration and was left untouched in a First Bank account because it was tied to the specific erosion-control project.
He challenged the state government to establish otherwise.
Soludo government disputes N2.13b
The state has now directly challenged that account.
Mefor said the First Bank account number 2018779464, which Obi identified as the account where the ecological funds were kept, was not an ecological fund account.
According to him, the account was an Internally Generated Revenue Consolidated Revenue Account.
‘We have obtained a certified printout of the account from inception to date,’ Mefor said.
‘From 2011, when the account was opened until date, there has never been any such amount, whether as inflow or balance, in the account.’
The government therefore disputed Obi’s claim that the N2.13 billion was sitting in the account at the time he handed over power.
That issue is likely to remain one of the most closely examined aspects of the dispute because, unlike broader arguments over debt responsibility, it turns on a specific bank account and transaction history.
The Soludo administration has also challenged Obi’s assertion that all salary, pension and gratuity obligations had been settled before he left office.
Mefor said the current administration had cleared about N22 billion in inherited gratuity arrears owed to retired state and local government employees and teachers, although some legacy obligations remained.
He specifically cited workers of the defunct Anambra State Water Corporation.
According to the commissioner, salary arrears involving Water Corporation workers persisted through the Obi administration and were eventually subjected to settlement negotiations under Soludo.
He said the current government had paid the first two of three agreed instalments.
The government also alleged that Obi’s administration verified and certified 16 months of salary arrears owed to primary school teachers but paid only five months.
Mefor said 11 months remained unresolved and that the state had constituted a committee headed by the Head of Service to conduct a fresh verification.
The current argument also echoes a financial controversy that has followed Obi since he departed from office in 2014.
At the time, the former governor said he handed over substantial cash and investments to Obiano.
The figure of N75 billion subsequently became the subject of competing interpretations.
Contemporary accounts of the handover controversy showed that the assets attributed to Obi included cash, investments, foreign currency-denominated securities and other balances, while the succeeding administration also identified liabilities arising from inherited projects.
A previous fact-check by the ICIR also noted that DMO records showed Anambra had external debt of about $30.32 million and domestic debt of about N3.03 billion as of December 2013.
It also found that the N75 billion figure had long been disputed and was not simply cash sitting in the state treasury.
The historical dispute is significant because the present argument is once again about whether assets and liabilities should be considered together when assessing the financial position Obi handed over in 2014.
Obi’s media office has rejected what it described as an attempt to subject him to selective scrutiny.
In a statement by spokesman Idris Zekeri Jnr., the Peter Obi Media Reach said Nigerians were being ‘too harsh’ on the former governor while allegedly applying different standards to other political figures.
‘Every word of Peter Obi is dissected. His past decisions are resurrected. Every allegation is amplified, even when disputed or needing context,’ the statement said.
The office said it welcomed scrutiny of Obi but wanted the same standard applied to all presidential candidates.
‘For emphasis, the Peter Obi Media Office encourages scrutiny of him… But for God’s sake, scrutinise everyone,’ it said.
It also dismissed the call for Obi to respond to the Anambra Government through political surrogates.
‘Peter Obi will not be dragged into endless exchanges with political proxies,’ the statement said, adding that he would continue his campaign and engagements with Nigerians.