Few political reputations in Nigeria have been built as successfully around a story of financial prudence as Peter Obi’s. His years as governor of Anambra State produced a narrative that has travelled far beyond the state: Obi, the careful manager who resisted the culture of extravagant government, settled inherited obligations, accumulated savings and investments and handed his successor a state in sound financial condition.
That account has become an important part of the political case his supporters make for him at the national level. It is therefore hardly surprising that any attempt to challenge the financial record of his administration generates a reaction that goes well beyond the technical language of public accounting.
The latest controversy began when the Anambra State Government released details of eight external financing facilities which it says were contracted during Obi’s tenure. The government puts the original value of the facilities at about $123.77 million and says $92.35 million remained outstanding as of June 30, 2026, translating to about ₦127.37 billion at the exchange rate used in its calculation. The projects included programmes involving health, agriculture, education, malaria control and erosion management.
Obi has rejected the suggestion that he left Anambra in debt. His position has been that when he handed over to Willie Obiano on March 17, 2014, the state had no unpaid salaries, pensions, gratuities or certified obligations to contractors and suppliers, while his administration had left substantial savings and investments. That position is not new. Obi and Obiano were already disputing the state’s financial position publicly in 2015, with competing accounts of the liabilities and assets contained in the handover.
That history matters because it exposes the weakness in the way Nigerians usually discuss government debt. The argument is presented as though one side must be telling the truth and the other must therefore be lying, when the more fundamental problem is that the word “debt” is being used to describe several different things.
A government can owe workers money, owe contractors for completed projects, carry pension liabilities, participate in a federally financed development programme, have an outstanding external loan and still possess substantial financial assets. None of those facts automatically cancels the others. What matters is how each liability arose, who was legally responsible for it, when it became an obligation, how much had been paid and what remained outstanding when one administration handed power to another.
That is the part of the Obi-Soludo argument that deserves much more attention than the political theatre surrounding it.
The Anambra government’s current figures should not simply be dismissed because they are politically inconvenient. There are identifiable external financing arrangements connected with projects in which Anambra participated, and the state is entitled to explain how those obligations appear in its accounts. But the existence of an outstanding obligation associated with a development programme is not by itself sufficient to establish the much broader political claim that Peter Obi personally borrowed the money in the ordinary sense in which Nigerians understand a governor taking a loan.
Some of the financing arrangements being discussed were federally structured development programmes in which the Federal Government was involved as the original borrower, with participating states receiving funds through subsidiary or on-lending arrangements. That distinction matters because the legal identity of the borrower, the beneficiary state, the repayment obligation and the administration in which a project was initiated are separate questions. Treating them as though they were identical produces a much simpler story than the documents necessarily support.
There is an equally important qualification on Obi’s side. His repeated description of Anambra as “debt-free” cannot settle the matter unless the precise meaning of the expression is established. If he means that the state had no unpaid salaries, pensions, gratuities or certified domestic obligations when he left office, that is a specific and potentially verifiable claim. If the expression is intended to mean that Anambra had no outstanding external financial obligations of any kind, then the relevant debt records have to be examined before such a sweeping claim can be accepted.
The distinction is not pedantic. It is the difference between an argument about the condition in which a governor left the state’s treasury and an argument about every long-term obligation attached to the state.
This is why the ₦127 billion figure now circulating deserves careful handling. It represents the present naira equivalent of the outstanding dollar-denominated facilities according to the state government’s calculation. It does not, on its own, establish what those obligations were worth when Obi left office in 2014, what portion was outstanding at that date, who was legally responsible for repayment or how much of the eventual balance arose from exchange-rate changes and subsequent servicing arrangements. The current administration has also had to correct an earlier figure that was wrongly presented, a reminder of why financial claims of this magnitude should be accompanied by the underlying documents rather than left to political interpretation.
The history of Anambra’s finances makes the temptation to simplify the matter even more dangerous. Peter Obi did not inherit a state whose financial story began with him, just as Willie Obiano did not inherit a blank sheet from Obi and Charles Soludo did not inherit one from Obiano.
In 2022, immediately after taking office, Soludo himself said that the audited accounts available to his administration showed more than ₦100 billion in debt and only about ₦300 million to ₦400 million in cash, while noting that further reconciliation was necessary. His comments were directed at the financial position he inherited from Obiano, the governor who had succeeded Obi and governed Anambra for eight years.
That is an important corrective to the idea that Soludo has simply reached backwards across an intervening administration in order to discredit Obi. He had already publicly questioned Obiano’s financial inheritance when he assumed office. What makes the current dispute different is that Obi’s financial record now has national political significance in a way that an ordinary argument between former and sitting state governors did not have in 2015 or 2022.
That political significance should make the demand for evidence stronger, not weaker.
Obi’s reputation for fiscal discipline should not place his administration beyond scrutiny, just as Soludo’s credentials as an economist do not give his administration the final word on a historical financial dispute. Neither political reputation nor professional standing can substitute for a properly reconciled public record.
There is also a tendency in Nigerian politics to treat borrowing itself as evidence of failure. That is another mistake. A state does not become financially irresponsible merely because it has borrowed money. Development financing can be entirely legitimate when it is properly authorised, transparently accounted for, directed towards productive purposes and serviced responsibly. The relevant question is not simply whether Anambra had obligations. It is what those obligations financed, how they were structured and whether they were responsibly managed.
The same principle applies to savings. Leaving money in the treasury is evidence of fiscal restraint only when the wider financial position is understood. A government can have large savings and significant liabilities at the same time. The proper measure is the state’s overall financial position, not the political attractiveness of one number taken from the asset side or the liability side of the balance sheet.
This is where the argument should finally move beyond Obi and Soludo.
If Anambra wants Nigerians to accept that Obi left substantial debt, the state should publish the original financing agreements, identify the legal borrower in each case, state the amount drawn, show the balance outstanding when Obi left office, explain the repayment structure and distinguish obligations incurred by Obi’s administration from obligations that arose subsequently.
Obi’s camp should submit to the same standard. If the claim is that he left Anambra with no outstanding obligations of the relevant kind, then the complete handover documents should be placed alongside the financial records showing the settlement of salaries, pensions, gratuities and certified contractual liabilities. The ₦75 billion in savings and investments that has been central to the Obi narrative should likewise be examined as part of the state’s complete financial position rather than treated as a number that settles every question.
That is not an unreasonable demand on either side. It is what accountability is supposed to look like.
The Nigerian public has heard too many arguments in which a figure is announced first and explained afterwards. A dollar obligation becomes a huge naira headline; a savings figure becomes proof of exceptional prudence, an inherited liability becomes evidence of the predecessor’s failure; a development loan becomes either reckless borrowing or visionary investment depending on who is speaking. By the time the accounting definitions are examined, the political conclusion has already been reached.
Anambra deserves a better standard.
The question is not whether Peter Obi is the financial saint his admirers describe or whether Charles Soludo has uncovered a hidden chapter of Obi’s administration. Those are political formulations, and neither should be allowed to replace the evidence.
The more useful question is what the records show about the financial position of Anambra on March 17, 2014, when Obi handed power to Obiano. What assets existed? What liabilities existed? Which were legally attributable to the state? Which had been incurred under earlier administrations? Which financing programmes were federally structured? What had been drawn down? What had been repaid? What remained outstanding? And how did the position change during Obiano’s eight years before Soludo assumed office?
Once those questions are answered from the same body of documents, the political argument will become considerably less mysterious.
It may turn out that Obi’s record was substantially better than his critics claim while the phrase “debt-free” was nevertheless too broad to describe every financial obligation connected to the state. It may turn out that some of the facilities now being presented politically as Obi’s debts were development programmes with more complicated federal and state financing structures. It may also turn out that subsequent administrations materially altered the state’s financial position before Soludo arrived.
None of those possibilities should frighten anyone who genuinely believes in accountability.
The problem begins when political loyalty determines which half of the balance sheet Nigerians are permitted to see.
Peter Obi should be willing to have his record examined in full, because a reputation for prudence is worth more when it survives documentary scrutiny than when it is protected by political devotion. Soludo’s administration should welcome the same scrutiny of the figures it has presented, because a claim about public debt becomes more credible when the underlying records are made available for independent examination rather than left to the competing narratives of politicians.
In the end, Anambra does not need another political legend. It needs a financial history that can be independently reconstructed and understood without requiring Nigerians to belong to either the Obi camp or the Soludo camp before they can believe the numbers.
The most useful outcome of this controversy would therefore not be a victory for one politician’s version of the past. It would be the establishment of a record detailed enough to prevent future politicians from rewriting that past whenever the next political contest begins.
That is the real test of public accountability: whether the facts remain intact after the politicians who made the claims have moved on.
Anambra’s financial history should be bigger than Peter Obi, bigger than Willie Obiano and bigger than Charles Soludo. If the records are opened, reconciled and independently examined, Nigerians can finally stop arguing over which political story sounds more convincing and begin discussing what actually happened to the state’s money.
That is the history worth preserving.
Stephanie Shaakaa shaakaastephanie02@gmail.com
08034861434
