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By Augustine Idiagbon
THE renewed dispute between former Anambra Governor, Peter Obi, and the incumbent Governor, Prof. Chukwuma Soludo over the state’s financial position at the end of Obi’s tenure has produced competing figures, claims and counterclaims.
At the centre of the dispute is whether Obi left Anambra with outstanding debts, what constituted such debts, and whether the approximately 123.77 million dollars cited by the state government represented debt personally contracted by Obi.
The available records show that Anambra had external debt during and after Obi’s tenure, but they also show that Nigeria’s system for external state borrowing involved the Federal Government contracting such facilities and on-lending them to the states.
The World Bank’s study of Nigeria’s state debt-management framework states that states cannot undertake external borrowing without Federal Government guarantees and that, in practice, external state loans are contracted by the Federal Government and transferred to states through subsidiary loan agreements.
This distinction is central to the present controversy.
What Anambra Government says
The Soludo administration, through the Commissioner for Information and Value Reorientation, Law Mefor, said that Obi’s administration contracted eight external facilities between 2007 and 2013.
The facilities, according to the state, had a combined value of 123.77 million dollars, with 92.35 million dollars outstanding as at June 30, 2026.
The government converted the outstanding balance to about N127.37 billion at the applicable exchange rate. It said the facilities covered malaria control, agriculture, healthcare, education, community development, erosion control and watershed management.
Commissioner for Finance Izuchukwu Okafor had earlier said the Soludo administration was still servicing inherited loans, with deductions being made from the state’s Federation Account allocation.
He also said the Soludo administration had not obtained any commercial bank loan since assuming office.
The state government therefore uses the existence of continuing repayments to argue that financial obligations traceable to projects undertaken during previous administrations remain liabilities of Anambra.
Obi’s counterargument
Obi has not denied that Anambra has debt obligations.
Rather, he disputes the description of the 123.77-million-dollar figure as money he personally borrowed or as the amount he left outstanding when he handed over power on March 17, 2014.
In his Sept. 25 statement, titled “On the Anambra Debt Question,” Obi said he did not approach any financial institution to borrow money or issue a bond on behalf of Anambra during his tenure.
He argued that the facilities cited by the state were primarily multilateral development programmes negotiated by the Federal Government and accessed by participating states through subsidiary arrangements.
That argument is consistent with the World Bank’s documented description of Nigeria’s external state borrowing framework.
A World Bank document on the State Education Programme Investment Project, for example, identifies the Federal Government of Nigeria as the borrower, with Anambra among participating states. It says the 150-million-dollar credit was to the Federal Government, which would disburse funds to participating states through subsidiary financing agreements.
The implication is important: a state can have a repayment obligation arising from a federally contracted development facility without the governor personally approaching the World Bank to borrow the money.
What does the DMO record show?
Another important part of the dispute concerns the timing and size of the debt.
Obi, citing Debt Management Office records, said Anambra’s external debt was about 18 million dollars when he assumed office in March 2006 and approximately 30 million dollars when he left in March 2014.
He further cited a DMO figure of about 45.15 million dollars as at Dec. 31, 2014, nine months after his departure.
An earlier DMO-based fact-check similarly reported that Anambra’s external debt stood at about 30.32 million dollars in December 2013.
These figures do not, by themselves, establish that Obi left Anambra without any debt.
They do, however, raise a legitimate accounting question about how the 123.77-million-dollar figure cited by the state should be reconciled with the DMO’s reported external-debt stock around the time of Obi’s exit.
In particular, four different figures need to be distinguished: the approved facility, the amount contracted, the amount actually disbursed or drawn by Anambra, and the balance outstanding at handover.
The state government has presented the original value of the eight facilities and the amount outstanding in 2026. The publicly available statements reviewed for this report do not provide a complete facility-by-facility reconciliation showing precisely how much of each facility had been drawn by March 17, 2014 and what amount was outstanding on that date.
Did Obi leave $150 million?
Obi has repeatedly maintained that he left substantial funds and investments for Anambra.
In his latest response, he said the dollar component of his savings invested in various bonds was over 150 million dollars and that the investments generated income for the state.
But independent verification of that particular claim has remained difficult.
The International Centre for Investigative Reporting, citing DMO records, reported that Anambra had about 30.32 million dollars in external debt as at December 2013 but said there was no publicly available independent document establishing that Obi handed over 150 million dollars to his successor.
It also reported that former Diamond Bank Chairman Alex Otti confirmed in 2017 that Obi left 150 million dollars in three banks, while noting the absence of independent public records validating the figure.
Thus, the 150-million-dollar savings claim should not be treated as independently established merely because Obi has repeated it.
The salary and pension dispute
The two sides also disagree over unpaid domestic obligations.
Obi maintains that he left office without outstanding salaries, pensions, gratuities or verified obligations to contractors whose work had been completed.
The Anambra Government disputes this, alleging that arrears involving teachers, pensioners and Water Corporation workers remained outstanding.
The government said it had since paid or negotiated settlements involving some inherited arrears.
Those allegations concern liabilities separate from the external development facilities and should therefore not automatically be added to the 123.77-million-dollar external-financing figure.
The earlier political dispute
The present disagreement also has a documented political history.
On Nov. 14, 2022, as Obi was preparing for the 2023 presidential election, Soludo published “History Beckons and I Will Not Be Silent (Part 1).”
In the article, Soludo questioned claims surrounding Obi’s investments in Anambra and also made extensive political arguments about Obi’s presidential campaign, including his view that Obi would not win the 2023 presidential election.
Soludo described Obi as his brother but sharply criticised his political strategy and called for him to return to APGA after the election.
The statement is relevant background to the current dispute because it demonstrates that disagreements between the two men over Obi’s record and political ambitions predate the current debt controversy.
However, it does not establish the motivation behind the present financial claims.
What the evidence establishes
The available documentary evidence establishes that Anambra had external debt obligations during the period covering Obi’s administration and continued to service inherited obligations after he left office.
It also establishes that Nigerian states’ external borrowing has historically been structured through the Federal Government, which contracts and guarantees such facilities before transferring them to states through subsidiary agreements.
Therefore, saying that Anambra had a liability connected to facilities implemented during Obi’s tenure is materially different from saying that Obi personally borrowed 123.77 million dollars from foreign lenders.
The state government’s figure of 123.77 million dollars also represents the combined original value of eight facilities, while the figure it says remained outstanding in June 2026 was 92.35 million dollars. Those figures cannot, without further reconciliation, be described as the amount Obi owed when he handed over in 2014.
Conversely, Obi’s claim that he left Anambra completely debt-free has not been fully established by the publicly available evidence reviewed here, because DMO records show external debt associated with Anambra around the period of his exit and the state continues to report repayment obligations.
The unresolved question is therefore narrower and more precise: what was Anambra’s actual outstanding liability on March 17, 2014; how much of each of the eight facilities had been disbursed by then; what portion was attributable to Obi’s administration under the subsidiary agreements; and what funds and investments were actually handed over to Willie Obiano?
Those questions require the underlying DMO schedules, the individual World Bank/IFAD financing agreements, subsidiary agreements, disbursement records, repayment schedules and Obi’s original March 2014 handover financial statements.
Until the records are reconciled facility by facility and date by date, neither the blanket assertion that Obi left Anambra with “$123.77 million debt” nor the blanket assertion that he left the state with “zero debt” fully captures the documentary picture.
M.P
Tags: Anambra Debt Row Soludo claims