Presidency Renews Attack On Obi, Cites Alleged Unpaid Debts, Gratuities During Anambra Tenure
By Sunday Etuka
The Presidency has again taken a swipe at Labour Party’s 2023 presidential candidate, Peter Obi, insisting that his tenure as Anambra State governor left behind a legacy of foreign debt, unpaid workers’ salaries, unsettled gratuities and pensions, as well as unaccounted-for ecological funds.
Special Adviser to the President on Information and Strategy, Bayo Onanuga, in a post on X handle on Saturday, said the Anambra State Government under Governor Charles Soludo had once again been compelled to respond to what he described as Obi’s persistent misrepresentation of his legacy in the state.
“Anambra government responds to Peter Obi’s brazen lies again on his legacy of foreign debt, unpaid salaries debt to workers, unpaid gratuities and pensions and the missing billions in ecological funds,” Onanuga said.
He said Peter Obi’s rabid followers would always defend the lies and deodorise them as the gospel truth since they see Peter as Saint Peter, the unblemished, the great performer. “But the truth is that he was a disaster as Anambra governor,” the SA added.
Recall that the Anambra government on Friday reacted after watching Obi’s interview on Arise TV on 24th September 2026, where he attempted to defend his record on the state’s finances.
The government in statement identified five key issues arising from the interview: the motive behind the timing of the debate; whether Obi took loans and owed workers’ salaries and pension arrears while concealing this in his handover notes; his approach to development, which it said prioritised saving money over citizens’ welfare; alleged discrepancies in his handover notes; and his response to questions about a missing N2.13 billion Ecological Fund.
Addressing the question of motive, the statement said the current administration had governed for four and a half years without publicly complaining about inherited debts, choosing instead to quietly service them.
It said the government only responded after Obi challenged anyone to prove he left behind unpaid debts, a claim it said informed his presidential ambition.
The statement accused Obi and his supporters of turning from “unprovoked aggressors” into “victims” once evidence was presented in response to his challenge.
The statement further alleged that Obi’s administration signed eight loan agreements with the International Development Association (IDA) of the World Bank during his eight years in office, totalling $123,771,179.30, some of which were reportedly disbursed before he left office.
It claimed that as of 30th June 2026, the Debt Management Office (DMO) put the outstanding balance on these loans at $92.35 million, or about N127.37 billion, which it said successive administrations have continued to service.
On the matter of unpaid salaries, the statement disputed Obi’s claim that he did not owe any salaries or pensions, alleging that his administration owed over 700 staff of the Anambra State Water Corporation their salaries, pensions and gratuities.
It said an arbitration panel in 2009 and a National Industrial Court judgment in 2019 both affirmed that the state government owed the workers, and that the Soludo administration reached an out-of-court settlement in February 2024 for a total sum of N1,563,143,020.13, of which N1,199,762,000 had so far been paid.
The statement also alleged that eleven months of pension arrears owed to primary school teachers, inherited from a previous administration, remained unresolved under Obi’s tenure, with the current government said to be re-verifying the claims for payment.
On Obi’s often-cited claim of having saved $150 million during his tenure, the statement argued that the purpose of governance was to improve citizens’ welfare rather than accumulate savings, describing his approach as reflecting “a default setting for a government bereft of any long-term transformational agenda.”
It contended that such savings held little value while poverty, insecurity and infrastructural decay persisted across the state.
Obi has yet to respond directly to the latest statement, though he has previously maintained that his administration left Anambra State financially sound and free of the debts being attributed to him.
