The Presidency has responded to the continuing disagreement between Peter Obi, former Governor of Anambra State and presidential candidate of the Nigeria Democratic Congress, and the state government regarding the state’s debts and financial liabilities.
In a post on X on Wednesday, Bayo Onanuga, Special Adviser to President Bola Tinubu on Information and Strategy, said Obi had asserted that he left Anambra free of debt and challenged him to honor his promise to withdraw from the presidential race should that claim be proven false.
Onanuga wrote, “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 added that the Anambra State Government had responded with claims concerning liabilities allegedly left by the former governor’s administration.
“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,” Onanuga said.
“The ball is back in his court. Will he follow through on his threat by quitting the race?” he asked.
The reaction came after the Anambra State Government issued a fresh response to Obi’s Tuesday denial of allegations that his administration had left behind inherited debts, including a ₦2bn ecological fund, contractor liabilities, and unpaid salaries, gratuities, and pensions.
Obi had stated that his administration settled over ₦35bn in accumulated gratuities and arrears and left office with no outstanding salary, pension, or gratuity obligations.
He also challenged the government’s claim about the ecological fund, stating that more than ₦2.13bn remained untouched in a First Bank account for the Oko/Umuchiana erosion crisis.
Nevertheless, in a statement issued on Wednesday, the Anambra State Commissioner for Information and Value Reformation, Law Mefor, challenged Obi’s version of events, stating that the account he pointed to was an Internally Generated Revenue Consolidated Revenue Account rather than an ecological fund account.
Mefor stated that the government had secured a certified printout of the account and asserted that “from 2011 when the account was opened until date, there has never been any such amount—whether as inflow or balance—in the account.”
Obi had dared anyone who could prove that his account of the state’s finances was wrong, declaring, “If anybody can establish anything to the contrary, I will stop campaigning.”
