The controversy over an alleged N250 million luxury handbag belonging to Margaret Obi has drawn a direct response from her husband, Peter Obi, the Nigeria Democratic Congress presidential candidate, who says his wife runs her own business and that her private spending has nothing to do with his handling of public funds.
Obi made the comments in an interview conducted by Adeola Fayehun, alongside Rudolf Okonkwo, recorded while he was in Washington, DC, and posted online around 14 September 2026. Asked about the handbag, he said his wife spends her own income, that he does not track what her clothes and accessories cost, and that his responsibility is limited to public money. “She has her own money. So if she has her own money and wants to buy an expensive watch, that’s her own. I’m not the one doing that. It’s not my business. I’m managing public money,” he said in the interview. He added that his wife was, in his words, more sophisticated in her fashion choices before he became governor, and is now less so.
The dispute began online. On 13 September, media personality Ifedayo Olarinde, known as Daddy Freeze, circulated photographs of Margaret Obi carrying a green Hermès Kelly 35 in the Malachite colourway. Social media users identified the model and put its listed retail price at about £131,939, which at exchange rates in mid September translates to roughly N237 million to N250 million. Daddy Freeze argued that an item at that price sits awkwardly with the frugal public brand Obi has built, saying a bag of that value is not a sign of prudence. The figure has not been independently confirmed against a receipt or a purchase record, and neither Obi nor his wife has stated what the bag actually cost or when it was acquired. What is established is the model shown in the images and Hermès’s published pricing for that line, which places bags of this type in the hundreds of thousands of pounds.
The reason the item became a story at all is Obi’s own political identity. Across the 2023 campaign and since, he built his appeal on personal thrift and careful management of public resources, a message that resonated strongly with younger voters through the Obidient Movement. He won about 25 per cent of the vote in the February 2023 presidential election, finishing third behind President Bola Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress and Atiku Abubakar. That brand of restraint is precisely what critics have used the handbag to test. Obi’s defence rests on a distinction he has drawn before, between his stewardship of state money and his family’s private wealth.
There is a documented basis for the private income argument. Margaret Obi, née Usen, born in Calabar in 1974, is described in public records as a businesswoman, philanthropist and rights advocate, and served as First Lady of Anambra State from 2006 to 2014 during her husband’s governorship. Obi has repeatedly pointed to his and his family’s earlier business background before public office. In the same interview he noted that he did not run an Office of the First Lady while governor, a point he has used to argue that his wife held no formal state role and drew no public budget in that capacity. Those claims about the past are consistent with the available record, though the specific source of funds for any single purchase is not something that can be verified from the outside.
The timing has added a second thread. Around the same period, questions were raised about why Obi, who has said he does not celebrate his own birthday, marked his wife’s. Margaret Obi’s birthday falls on 9 September. In the interview he said he does not stop others from celebrating and described his household as a happy one. The point is minor beside the handbag, but both feed the same underlying debate about whether a politician who campaigns on austerity can separate his message from his family’s visible consumption.
The affair also lands against a shifting party backdrop that gives it added weight. Obi contested in 2023 on the Labour Party platform, moved to the African Democratic Congress in 2025 as part of an opposition coalition, then left for the Nigeria Democratic Congress, which registered early in 2026 and named him its presidential candidate in late May 2026, with the former Kano governor Rabiu Kwankwaso associated with the ticket. He will again face Tinubu and Atiku in 2027, a rematch of the 2023 field. With the race already forming, personal conduct and image have become part of the contest, and opponents on all sides have incentives to press any perceived gap between a candidate’s words and his lifestyle.
For now the confirmed facts are narrow. Images show Margaret Obi with a Hermès bag whose model retails in the hundreds of thousands of pounds. Obi says the purchase, whatever its cost, was made with his wife’s own money and did not touch public funds. He has not disputed that the bag exists or that it is expensive, and he has not offered figures of his own. The valuation circulating online is an estimate based on brand pricing rather than a disclosed transaction, and the sourcing of the money remains a private matter that has not been placed on any public record. What the episode does is sharpen a question voters will weigh directly in 2027: how much a candidate’s household spending should shape judgements about his suitability for office, and whether the line Obi draws between private wealth and public trust holds up under scrutiny.