The Anambra State Government has challenged former governor Peter Obi to withdraw from the 2027 presidential race, saying he broke two pledges he made in office on the state’s debt and the payment of workers’ salaries.
The challenge came on Tuesday in a post on the official X account of the state’s New Media Office, which asked, “When will Peter Obi quit presidential campaign?” The government said Obi had vowed to quit the race if it was proven he left Anambra in debt, and to resign as governor if workers were not paid as and when due. It said both conditions had been breached.
To support the salary claim, the government released a letter dated 25 April 2006, which it said was signed by Chuks Iloegbunam, Obi’s chief of staff at the time. Titled “Gubernatorial Prerogative,” the document made a “special appeal” for Obi to settle arrears owed to staff of the Anambra State Water Corporation.
According to the letter, the corporation had a monthly wage bill of about N15 million, and its workers had last been paid in February. It urged Obi to place the corporation among parastatals funded through subventions so staff would stop coming to his office over unpaid wages, and it referenced his manifesto pledge to resign if any worker was not paid on time.
The government’s move is the latest turn in a running dispute between Governor Charles Soludo’s administration and Obi over the state’s finances when he handed over in March 2014.
On 17 September, the Commissioner for Information and Value Reorientation, Dr Law Mefor, issued a statement titled “Gov Peter Obi and Record of Public Debt in Anambra: Facts Beyond Propaganda and Lies.” It alleged that Obi left outstanding external loans as well as salary, pension and gratuity arrears.
Mefor said the balance on eight external borrowings contracted under Obi stood at N127.4 billion as of 30 June 2026, at the official exchange rate. He put the original external debt at 123.77 million dollars, taken for projects covering malaria control, erosion management, education and healthcare, and said the loans were still being serviced, with hundreds of millions of naira deducted monthly from the state’s federal allocation.
Speaking on Arise Television on 18 September, Mefor argued that the guarantees the Federal Government provided on some of the facilities did not make them grants. “A loan is a loan, and whether it is sovereign or not, even an interest-free loan is still a loan,” he said, adding that Soludo had cleared about N22 billion in gratuity arrears inherited from earlier administrations. He said the central issue was Obi’s claim that he did not borrow, which he described as inaccurate.
The government also disputed Obi’s account of an ecological fund. Mefor said the account Obi cited was an Internally Generated Revenue Consolidated Revenue account and had never held the roughly N2.13 billion Obi claimed to have left in it.
Obi, now the presidential candidate of the Nigeria Democratic Congress, has rejected the allegations. He said his administration owed no salaries, pensions, gratuities or certified contractor payments when he left office, and that he cleared more than N35 billion in historical gratuities and arrears during his tenure.
“As at the day I left office, I was not owing any salary, pension, or gratuity that Anambra State Government is supposed to pay,” Obi said in an interview in Washington, describing the debt claim as false. In a follow-up post, he said he preserved the funds in the state’s accounts for the incoming administration of Willie Obiano, who succeeded him in 2014.
Obi has also turned the challenge back on the government. He pledged to stop campaigning for the presidency if the state could produce evidence that he left debts or owed any contractor whose job had been processed and certified.
The two sides are disputing different things at once, which is part of why the figures do not meet. The government’s N127.4 billion relates to project loans still being repaid, while Obi’s defence speaks to worker entitlements and contractor obligations. The record of the 2014 handover to Obiano, and whether it distinguished long-term project debt from staff arrears, sits at the centre of that gap, and neither side has published a reconciled account.
The exchange carries weight beyond Anambra because Obi is again a national contender. He ran on the Labour Party platform in the 2023 election and is contesting in 2027 under the NDC. The Presidency has joined the state’s line of argument, with presidential spokesman Bayo Onanuga also calling on Obi to honour his pledge to step aside if the claims are established.
For now, the dispute rests on competing documents and figures rather than any independent verification. What Obi actually left in 2014, measured in a single agreed set of accounts, remains unresolved, and both camps have invited the other to prove its case.