By Mick Oseji, Asaba
The Anambra State Government, led by Governor Charles Chukwuma Soludo, has faulted former governor Peter Obi over his comments on the state’s financial savings, arguing that the welfare, security and development of citizens should take precedence over earning interest from money kept in banks.
The state government made its position known on Saturday in a lengthy statement issued by the Commissioner for Information, Law Mefor.
The statement, subtitled “H.E. Peter Obi’s Unique Idea of Development Where the Purpose of Development Is to Save Money and Earn Interest in Banks Rather Than the Safety and Welfare of Citizens,” said the central issue was not whether Obi saved money while in office, but questions surrounding borrowing, outstanding liabilities and the accounting treatment of the state’s finances.
According to the government, Obi’s argument that funds saved in banks could have generated enough interest to service loans if his successor had left the money untouched amounted to an inappropriate way of treating government finances.
The statement said: “The issue was whether you borrowed and left debt while concealing and lying about it. But since it has become a major plank of your tactic to distract from the issue, let us also address it.”
The government acknowledged that Obi had saved about $150 million during his tenure, but questioned whether keeping the money in banks to generate interest represented the most appropriate use of public resources in a state facing significant development challenges.
It argued that government should primarily use public resources to improve citizens’ security, welfare and living conditions, rather than prioritising financial returns from savings.
The statement further claimed that Anambra had faced widespread poverty, insecurity, inadequate infrastructure and deficiencies in public healthcare and education during the period under review.
It alleged that 78 of the state’s 179 communities did not have public primary schools at the time, while some communities and local government areas lacked functional primary healthcare centres and general hospitals.
The government also cited rural inaccessibility, post-harvest losses, erosion and inadequate public infrastructure among the challenges confronting the state.
According to the statement, resources deployed toward human capital development and infrastructure could generate broader social and economic benefits by improving productivity and living conditions, rather than merely producing financial interest.
The Soludo administration also defended the spending undertaken by Obi’s successor, the late former Governor Willie Obiano, arguing that the funds saved by the previous administration were subsequently deployed for development and other government purposes.
The statement claimed that such spending contributed to reducing poverty and improving security before the escalation of attacks by criminal groups in the South-East from 2021.
It questioned the extent to which monetary savings and interest earnings could be compared with the value of improved living conditions and the lives of citizens affected by government policies.
“Governance and development are different from trading where everything is primarily about profit and loss account without much consideration for human life,” the statement said.
The government therefore maintained that public finance should be assessed not only by the amount of money saved or the interest generated, but also by the extent to which government resources translate into security, infrastructure, healthcare, education and improved living conditions for citizens.
The statement in full: PETER OBI’S DEBTS AND LIES: MORE QUESTIONS THAN ANSWERS
Introduction:
We watched the interview by His Excellency, Mr. Peter Obi, CON, on Arise TV on 24th September, 2026, where he tried to equivocate about the settled matter of his legacy of debts in Anambra, with intent to obfuscate and change the subject.
In the said interview, five key matters arose and we intend to address them here:
a) Motive and why now?
b) Did he take loans and owe salaries/pension arrears to workers and conceal same from his handover notes and lie about them for 13 years?
c) H.E. Peter Obi’s unique arithmetic of development where the purpose of development is to save money and earn interest in banks rather than the safety and welfare of citizens;
d) His unique handover note with some phoney assets but concealed humongous liabilities; and
e) His deliberate evasion of the question of where he kept the N2.13 billion Ecological Fund which could not be found in the account and bank he claimed to have left it.
a) Motive and Why Now? Hypocrisy and Multiple Standards
Part of the spin around the debate has been to paint it as ‘politically motivated’ — otherwise, why now? Two points need emphasis.
First, this government has been in office for four and a half years and has never complained about any inherited debt, whether borrowings or salary arrears, and has been paying billions of Naira to service them. That is normal. Even when H.E. Peter Obi continued to lie about them, we ignored him. Not until he threw his bombshell “challenge” to us and “anyone/everyone” who could show that he owed one person any salary or contractor or any debt whatsoever — and even staked his presidential bid on the bubble lie. His supporters applauded to high heavens. What an audacious affront!
Now, a government that has been quietly paying billions to liquidate the debts provides unassailable evidence in response to his challenge — and he and his supporters quickly move from being the unprovoked aggressors to playing the victims. You cannot attack first and then end up as the victim at the same time. For us, it is only a matter of record. But since Mr. Obi himself initiated this self-imposed challenge — daring anyone to prove that he left debts — it is only a matter of integrity and character that he owns up to the outcome.
There is this dangerous trend in our public discourse whereby there are two sets of standards: one for everyone else and another for H.E. Peter Obi. This is one former governor of Anambra who is not on record to have ever complimented any of his predecessors or successors in office. He spent eight years in office demarketing Dr. Mbadinuju and Dr. Ngige and has spent the last 13 years with his paid media team, Val Obienyem and dozens of others, daily demarketing his successors. He is the only next big thing after God. And indeed, to his credit, the media packaging has worked.
Only Peter Obi has the right to lie about and against any and everyone, and if you dare to expose his lies, you must be the “sinner”, the “saboteur”, etc. In 2022, when this administration assumed office, he as usual publicly lied that his investment of about $14 million in the brewery in which he has interest was worth “over $100 million”. When our governor exposed the lie in an interview in November 2022 that the investment was worth “next to nothing”, hell was let loose. Even till date, that same investment of $14 million is still worth less than $3 million.
Again, since H.E. Peter Obi left APGA in 2014, he has been campaigning and doing everything to kill the party. In 2021, when our governor contested for his first term, H.E. Peter Obi was literally the campaign manager for Mr. Val Ozigbo of the PDP, but our governor won by a landslide. Again, last year in 2025, H.E. Peter Obi toured Anambra with his preferred candidate for governor, George Moghalu of LP, against our governor, and again Gov. Soludo won by a landslide.
For his supporters, H.E. Peter Obi has the right to choose who to support and campaign for, even when he was not on the ballot, but for our governor to dare to exercise the same right and support anyone else but Peter Obi, he must be crucified.
In 2011, H.E. Peter Obi and APGA adopted President Jonathan of the PDP as its presidential candidate and established the policy that APGA would work with and support the party/government at the federal level. Then it was okay because Peter Obi did it, but now it is sacrilegious for Gov. Soludo and APGA, which Peter Obi wants dead, to adopt President Tinubu as APGA’s presidential candidate.
Currently, our government is being blamed for debunking the obvious lies of Peter Obi regarding the state of Anambra finances he left behind. No one blames him for being a pathological liar. What one hears is: “Yes, we know that he is lying, but must you be the one to expose the lies of a brother — even if his lies are hurting you?” Hypocrisy and multiple standards everywhere! These do not advance the cause of public accountability and consistency in our quest for strong ethical politics and governance. Those who love H.E. Peter Obi should advise him to STOP LYING AS A HABIT SO AS TO AVOID THE CONSTANT EMBARRASSMENT OF CONFRONTING INCONVENIENT FACTS AND TRUTHS. It is also our advice to him as a brother.
b) Did H.E. Peter Obi Borrow IDA/World Bank Loans and Also Leave Unpaid Salary/Pension Arrears?
We have definitively and conclusively provided evidence that H.E. Peter Obi’s administration signed 8 loans from the IDA-World Bank over his eight-year tenure, totalling US$123,771,179.30, and even disbursed some of it before leaving office but deceptively concealed these from his handover notes.
We have provided the dates and the amounts that his administration signed the loans, and this can be verified from the Debt Management Office (DMO), Abuja. As of 30th June, 2026, the DMO report showed the outstanding balance of those same eight loans was $92.35 million, equivalent to N127.37 billion, which successive administrations, including the current one, have continued to service through monthly FAAC deductions.
Till date, neither H.E. Peter Obi nor anyone else has disputed these facts at the DMO. So, what is the issue again? We do not want to comment on his laughable argument: “I did not go to the World Bank or DMO to borrow the money”. H.E. Peter Obi, you do not have to “go to a bank or DMO” before your borrowing can be perfected. All that is required is for you to sign the loan agreements and your government did.
Many Ndi Anambra were actually scandalized to see their former governor, whose government signed Subsidiary Loan Agreements (SLAs), but who did not seem to know the difference between an IDA-World Bank loan, which the Anambra State Government is still paying billions to repay and service, and grants.
No state government is forced to take any IDA-World Bank loan: you must express interest and sign for the loan before you can access it. It was a pitiable sight seeing our respected former governor showing a lack of understanding and almost insinuating that he did not know that he borrowed even after signing for the loan.
Our current government rejected a similar World Bank loan — NG-CARES 1 — principally because the terms were considered too expensive due to exchange rate risks. But if future IDA-World Bank loans are on favourable terms, we would consider them.
The fact again is that H.E. PETER OBI BORROWED AND LEFT A DEBT of over US$123 million contrary to all his lies about it for 13 years, and the current government is paying billions of Naira in repayment. Don’t change the subject. No matter how you disingenuously invent the “account net-offs”, the facts won’t go away.
The issue was never whether the assets you left behind were more than enough to repay the debt. That is what you are saying now. But your initial challenge was that you never left any debt. Yet, Peter Obi, every accounting balance sheet has sections on Assets and Liabilities. No matter how huge the assets or how miniscule the liabilities, you are obliged to disclose both sides. It is Accountancy 101. In this case, you exaggerated the asset side but concealed and lied about the liabilities side.
H.E. Peter Obi Did Not Just Owe One Worker, He Owed Over 700 Workers and Thousands of Pensioners:
Mr. Obi claimed that he did not owe any salaries or pensions. At the interview on Arise TV, H.E. Obi skirted around the issue by suggesting that those workers, especially of the Anambra State Water Corporation — a State Agency — were not on the State’s schedule of payment and therefore it was not his government’s responsibility to pay them. Something is certainly wrong somewhere. It was certainly insensitive and, some would say, inhuman for a leader to make that kind of statement on national television.
The facts contradict H.E. Peter Obi. The records show that he owed over 700 staff of the Anambra State Water Corporation their salaries, pensions and gratuities. An Arbitration Panel in 2009 as well as the National Industrial Court judgment of 2019 confirmed that the State Government owed the workers.
After the court judgment, the State Government accounts were going to be garnished, but this current administration opted for an out-of-court settlement on 26th February, 2024, for a total sum of N1,563,143,020.13. So far, our State Government has paid the sum of N1,199,762,000 and the last tranche will be paid.
We understand that you like to stage drama with everything, but this is not fiction. We are talking about hundreds of human beings with families. We understand that many of them have died due to frustration and penury. We are talking about over N1 billion already paid — arrears owed and left by your government unpaid.
Also, there are still 11 months of pension arrears owed to primary school teachers which H.E. Obi’s government inherited from Gov. Mbadinuju. They were certified as valid pension arrears for 16 months and his government paid for only five months and only directed that the remaining 11 months be paid almost on the eve of his final day in office. It has remained unpaid till date and our government is currently re-verifying it and hopes to pay soon. Again, we don’t play politics with people’s lives. These are teachers who taught our children — some of whom are now adults — but your government left them to languish and die in agony and penury.
*c) H.E. Peter Obi’s Unique Understanding of Development Where the Purpose of Development Is to Save Money and Earn Interest in Banks Rather Than the Safety and Welfare of Citizens*
H.E. Peter Obi, again, don’t try to change the subject. The issue was never and still is not whether or not you saved money. The issue is whether you borrowed and left debt while concealing and lying about it. But since it has become a major plank of your tactic to distract from the issue, let us also address it.
Your main argument is that you saved US$150 million in banks and that if your successor, Chief Obiano, had left the ‘investment’, it would have earned enough “interest” to service the loans. Therefore, in your invented new accounting theory, the loan should not be recognized in the balance sheet as a liability because the investment side was more than enough to repay it. If you write this in Accountancy 101 exams, you will certainly score an “F” grade — and even less than a third-class grade.
But let’s interrogate your jaundiced logic. Yes, we don’t dispute that you saved $150 million, and if it had not been spent by your immediate successor, it would have been earning interest. But did it, and does it make any sense at all? Many may argue that the so-called savings were a default setting for a government bereft of any long-term transformational agenda.
Many would be concerned that Obi’s argument showed an uncomfortable lack of understanding of the purpose of government as well as the foundations of social and economic development. Government exists to improve the security and welfare of the people, and not to save money and earn interest. It will be an irresponsible and incompetent government that will be taxing even poor market women and saving same in banks to earn interest, including in a bank in which the governor has interest, while millions of its people are falling into poverty and insecurity.
Does it make any social or economic sense for a government to be collecting taxes from its impoverished residents and saving same in bank accounts for “interests” while millions of its citizens, over 50%, were in dire poverty with rising insecurity, decayed infrastructure, literally dead public health and public educational systems, with few teachers and few medical personnel, no pipe-borne water, urban decay, no power plant, no airport, no government house/lodge, over 900 active gully erosion sites, etc.?
Not when 78 out of 179 communities never had any public primary schools, and many communities and local governments never had functional primary health care centres and general hospitals, etc. Many rural communities were totally inaccessible, leading to post-harvest losses of over 40% for poor farmers.
One argument is that for an underdeveloped society such as ours, a cleverly targeted investment of the so-called “savings” in human capital and infrastructure that ratchets productivity has much higher social and economic rates of return than the miniscule financial returns — “interest income” — thrown up by H.E. Obi during his interview.
For example, H.E. Peter Obi blamed his successor, Chief Obiano, for spending the so-called savings instead of leaving them to earn bank interest. This is really a shocking revelation of his gross misunderstanding of development and governance. Well, his successor spent the money and millions of people that his government threw into poverty were pulled out of poverty and insecurity significantly improved until the ‘Unknown Gunmen — UGM’ unleashed terror in the Southeast from 2021.
How much money would H.E. Peter Obi ascribe to the lives of the millions of people pulled out of poverty? Please, Your Excellency, Peter Obi: governance and development are different from trading where everything is primarily about profit and loss account without much consideration for human life.
Your response to the thousands of workers and pensioners you owed and your reducing development to the size of bank accounts and interest income while millions die in poverty don’t show good signs.
Indeed, if government savings and interest income constitute an indicator of governance performance, perhaps it should have been one of the MDGs or SDGs and governments would start competing as to who saves the most rather than who improves the security and welfare of the people the most. The gloating over “savings” and interest income in the midst of acute misery, except for temporary, inter-temporal smoothing of revenue volatility, may garner transient emotional applause but is certainly an unfortunate economic argument.
It is really funny to see our former governor gloat that “no other governor in Nigeria saved like he did”. Yes, no governor in his right senses and faced with such humongous challenges as Anambra faced at the time will be sadistic enough to keep the money in the bank while citizens, including pensioners, are dying of poverty and insecurity. Alternatively, perhaps H.E. Peter Obi was overwhelmed by the US$4.05 billion available to him over the eight-year period that he didn’t know what to do but keep part of it in the bank and earn interest. Thanks very much for doing so, and thanks to Chief Obiano for spending it to save millions of people and giving Anambra its first airport.
d) H.E. Peter Obi’s Unique Handover Note With Some Phoney Assets But Concealed Humongous Liabilities
At the Arise TV interview, H.E. Peter Obi handed the interviewer a copy of what he has been circulating as his Handover Note — apparently a “proof” of his investments/savings, etc. We are also in possession of the Handover Note and the inconsistencies, deceit and dishonesty wrapped in it are shameful and will be subject for another day. Just a few footnotes suffice at this moment.
The so-called Handover Note showed disingenuous accounting to balloon the asset side while deceptively hiding the liabilities. The asset side, deceptively presented as “money left for his successor”, included valuations for abandoned and uncompleted projects including Nnewi Shopping Mall, now overgrown by weeds; Onitsha Hotel — a carcass that will soon be demolished as it may collapse anytime; Agulu Lake Hotel that was literally at foundation stage when he left office, etc.
The asset side also included Ten Billion Naira (N10,000,000,000) claimed to be “approved refund” by the Federal Government and stated as part of the “net balance” when the money was not received before he left office and no one is sure that the “approved refund” ever came. The same bogus net balances included balances in MDAs’ accounts — largely monies that were already expended from the consolidated revenue fund or not available for spending, etc.
Curiously, the Handover Note never mentioned that his government had awarded and signed valid contracts for 101 roads totalling 779 kilometres and outstanding liabilities on them of N127 billion as at that date. As at that date and in US dollar terms, the total value of the liabilities on roads alone was about US$750 million. Compare this to the celebrated $150 million deposits in commercial banks.
His successor stated the above facts on television. WE STATE WITHOUT FEAR OF CONTRADICTION THAT NO MATTER HOW YOU SLICE AND DICE IT, H.E. PETER OBI LEFT A NET LIABILITY TO HIS SUCCESSOR FROM A BALANCE SHEET POINT OF VIEW.
e) The Curious Silence On The Purported N2.13 Billion Ecological Fund, Which We Cannot Trace In The Account Details H.E. Obi Provided
We also observed with keen interest the absolute silence on the purported N2.13 billion Ecological Fund in the television appearance, despite this being the core of his recent challenge, where he mentioned with specific details: the account number, name of the bank, and the branch where he stated categorically that he left “over N2.13 billion” as at the date he handed over on 17th March, 2014.
The State is deeply interested to know the whereabouts of the said money, as the account he mentioned with First Bank was neither an ecological funds account, nor does it contain the N2.13 billion either as inflow or existing balance at any time within its active lifespan. This is in line with the bank statement we obtained from the bank.
For the avoidance of doubt, First Bank in its letter of 16th September, 2026, confirmed that:
i) Account 2018779464 which Mr. Obi quoted as holding N2.13 billion Ecological Fund is actually the ANSG IGR Consolidated Account, that is, account for Internally Generated Revenue — IGR;
ii) As of 17th March, 2014, the balance on that IGR account was not close to N2 billion, and at no time in its active life from 2011 to 2018 did it ever carry N2.13 billion as inflow or balance.
Since the money is not in the First Bank account as claimed, where is it? Or is the money actually missing? This question remains unanswered.
Conclusion:
As stated at the beginning, we did not ask for this: H.E. Peter Obi did. You cannot make lying a habit and because most people don’t bother to “go and verify”, you then elevate it to the audacity to challenge even the government that is quietly paying the debts you left behind to “prove that you owe anyone any debt or salary/pension arrears” — and if anyone finds one person, he will quit his 2027 presidential campaign.
After we provided unassailable evidence in response to his challenge, he and his supporters have been hair-splitting, trying to blame us, the victim of his challenge, for bursting the bubble or inventing all manner of “new accounting theories” to explain that you can have a balance sheet and conceal the liabilities side — simply because your asset side is higher than the liabilities. That’s voodoo accounting!
But more fundamentally, we have also shown that even a fuller accounting of both assets and liabilities shows that H.E. Peter Obi left humongous net liabilities — not net assets.
As a responsible government and committed to ethical governance and politics, we remain ready to provide information that advances public interest. For H.E. Peter Obi, it is a matter of word, character and integrity.
Without any provocation, you threw a self-imposed challenge. Now that the facts challenge your character and integrity, you have no choice but to take the path of honour: tender an unreserved apology to the government and people of Anambra State and Nigeria and move on. You don’t continue digging when you are already at the bottom of the hole.
We won’t encourage you to honour your pledge to quit your campaign: we wish you well. Except of course if you truly believe in the motto of one of the commercial banks that says: “We are Fidelity: We keep our word”!
Signed:
Dr. Law Mefor
Commissioner for Information and Value Reorientation
Anambra State Government
26th September, 2026
