Peter Obi Anambra debt claims are false, he says, daring the state government to prove unpaid bills or watch him end his 2027 campaign
Peter Gregory Obi, presidential candidate of the Nigeria Democratic Congress and former governor of Anambra State, said in a statement circulated on 15 September 2026 that critics should prove he left unpaid debts or he would stop campaigning.
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He was answering the Anambra State Government’s claim that his years in office left inherited liabilities, including a ₦2 billion ecological loan.
Mr Peter Obi called that account false. He said his administration cleared historical gratuities and arrears worth more than ₦35 billion and handed over in March 2014 with no outstanding salaries, pensions or certified contractor bills.
The ₦2 billion ecological sum, he said, arrived about three months before the end of his tenure for the Oko/Umuchiana erosion crisis.
He refused to spend it and left it for his successor because it was tied to a named project. He put that pot outside more than ₦75 billion in savings he says the state received at handover.
“If anybody can establish anything to the contrary, I will stop campaigning,” he said.
The trigger was Izuchukwu Okafor, Anambra’s Commissioner for Finance under Governor Chukwuma Charles Soludo, who told a Ndi Anambra podcast that Federation Account deductions still service loans from earlier governors, including Mr Peter Obi and Chief Willie Obiano.
Mr Izuchukwu Okafor said the present government had taken no new commercial-bank loan and had cut the debt stock by more than 83 per cent. He did not publish a facility-by-facility list in the circulated remarks.
Later posts from Mr Peter Obi named First Bank account 2018779464 and a balance above ₦2.13 billion.
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A campaign dare and an account number are not a joint audit. Twelve years of refinancing can blur what “left behind” means. Until both sides table the 2014 handover notes and the current FAAC deduction codes, the public has a wager, not a verdict.
