The Anambra State Government has released details of loans it said were inherited from the administration of former Governor Peter Obi, claiming that outstanding balances on eight external borrowings linked to his tenure stood at N127.4 billion as of June 30, 2026.
The government, through the Commissioner for Information and Value Reorientation, Law Mefor, also accused Obi of leaving behind unpaid salaries, pensions and gratuities, while disputing his claim that his administration left more than N2.13 billion in an Ecological Fund account.
The claims were contained in a statement titled, “Gov Peter Obi and Record of Public Debt in Anambra: Facts Beyond Propaganda and Lies,” issued on Wednesday in response to recent comments by Obi concerning the state’s debt profile.
According to the government, Obi contracted $123.77 million in external debt during his eight-year tenure as governor, adding that eight separate external loans remained linked to his administration when he left office on March 17, 2014.
It said records from the Debt Management Office showed that the outstanding balance on the loans had risen to N127.4 billion at the official exchange rate as of June 2026.
The state government said the loans were obtained for areas including erosion control, malaria intervention, education and healthcare, insisting that its objection was not to borrowing itself but to claims that Obi left the state without significant liabilities.
The government also challenged Obi’s reported claim that he cleared inherited salary, pension and gratuity arrears before leaving office.
It said the current administration had paid about N22 billion in inherited gratuity arrears and was still dealing with salary arrears involving workers of the defunct Water Corporation.
The government further alleged that Obi’s administration had verified 16 months of salary arrears owed to some primary school teachers under the local government system but paid only five months.
On the disputed ecological fund, the government said the bank account cited by Obi was actually an internally generated revenue consolidated account and not an ecological fund account.
It claimed that a certified account statement obtained from First Bank showed that the account, opened in 2011, never recorded an inflow or balance of N2.13 billion.
The government therefore challenged the former governor to identify where the money was allegedly kept if it was not reflected in the account he cited.
It also rejected the reported claim that Obi left behind about N75 billion in savings or investments, describing the matter as part of an ongoing dispute over the state’s financial records.
However, a former aide to Obi, who spoke anonymously, dismissed the renewed criticism as part of an attempt to keep the former governor politically engaged in controversies surrounding his tenure.
The aide questioned why the present administration continued to focus on Obi despite the fact that Soludo was not the governor who directly received the 2014 handover from Obi.
The latest exchange comes as Obi, the Nigeria Democratic Congress presidential candidate for the 2027 election, faces renewed scrutiny over his record as Anambra governor, while the state government continues to defend its own handling of the state’s finances.
The competing claims over the loans, pension arrears, ecological funds and alleged savings remain matters of political dispute, with both sides presenting different accounts of the state’s financial position at the end of Obi’s tenure.
