The Presidency has weighed into the escalating financial dispute between former Anambra State Governor Peter Obi and the current state administration, challenging the presidential hopeful to honor his public vow.
The controversy centers on competing claims regarding the state’s financial standing when Obi handed over power.
Obi, the presidential candidate of the Nigeria Democratic Congress, had previously challenged critics to disprove his zero-debt claim, vowing to immediately halt his campaign if proven wrong.
In a statement shared via his official X handle on Wednesday, Special Adviser to President Bola Tinubu on Information and Strategy, Bayo Onanuga, declared that the challenge has now been met with official data from the state government.
According to Onanuga, the Anambra State Government has formally confronted Obi with figures and records detailing outstanding liabilities inherited from his tenure, specifically pointing to unpaid obligations owed to teachers, Water Corporation workers, and pensioners.
The Presidency’s intervention follows a sharp rebuttal issued earlier by the Anambra State Government, delivered through the Commissioner for Information and Value Reformation, Law Mefor.
Mefor dismissed Obi’s Tuesday press defense, where the former governor insisted his administration cleared over ₦35 billion in historical arrears and left office without outstanding salary or pension burdens.
Furthermore, Mefor addressed Obi’s claims regarding a ₦2.13 billion ecological fund alleged to have been left untouched in a First Bank account for erosion mitigation in Oko and Umuchiana.
The state commissioner countered that the referenced ledger is actually an Internally Generated Revenue Consolidated Revenue Account rather than an ecological reserve.
Citing certified financial printouts, Mefor asserted that checks spanning from the account’s creation in 2011 to the present day reveal no record of the claimed inflows or balances.
With the state government laying out these documented counter-claims, Onanuga emphasized that the ball is now firmly in Obi’s court, posing the ultimate question of whether the politician will follow through on his widely publicized threat to withdraw from the race.
