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The Presidency has challenged former Anambra State Governor Peter Obi to honour his pledge to stop campaigning for the presidency if claims that he left the state with outstanding liabilities are established.
Special Adviser to President Bola Tinubu on Information and Strategy, Bayo Onanuga, issued the challenge on Wednesday in a post on X, following a fresh dispute between Obi and the Anambra State Government over the state’s financial obligations.
Onanuga said Obi had previously claimed that he left Anambra with a clean debt record and had pledged to end his presidential campaign if the claim was disproved.
“Peter Obi claimed he left Anambra with a clean slate of debt and even threatened to quit the presidential race if his claims were proven otherwise,” Onanuga wrote.
He said the Anambra State Government had now presented what it described as records showing liabilities allegedly left by Obi’s administration, including obligations to workers and pensioners.
“Now, the Anambra government has confronted him with facts and figures showing he owed Water Corporation workers, teachers, and pension and gratuities, and had also borrowed for frivolous things,” Onanuga said.
“The ball is back in his court. Will he follow through on his threat by quitting the race?” he asked.
The exchange followed Obi’s rejection of claims that his administration left outstanding salaries, pensions, gratuities and contractor liabilities.
The former governor said his administration cleared more than ₦35bn in historical gratuities and arrears before handing over power in 2014.
Obi also disputed the state government’s account of an alleged ₦2bn ecological fund, saying more than ₦2.13bn had been left untouched in a First Bank account for the Oko/Umuchiana erosion-control project.
However, Anambra Commissioner for Information and Value Reformation, Law Mefor, disputed that account, saying the First Bank account identified by Obi was an Internally Generated Revenue Consolidated Revenue Account and not an ecological fund account.
He said the government obtained a certified printout covering the account’s transactions from its opening in 201
Mefor said the records showed that the account had never contained the amount claimed by Obi, stating that “from 2011 when the account was opened until date, there has never been any such amount whether as inflow or balance in the account.”
Obi had earlier challenged anyone disputing his account of the state’s finances to provide evidence, saying, “If anybody can establish anything to the contrary, I will stop campaigning.” The competing claims have now placed his pledge at the centre of the latest political dispute over Anambra’s finances.
