By: Ganiyu Olayinka
The Anambra State Government has again urged former governor Peter Obi to step down from the 2027 presidential race, accusing him of reneging on campaign pledges tied to debt and the timely payment of workers’ salaries.
In a post on its official X account on Tuesday, the state’s New Media Office asked, “When will Peter Obi quit presidential campaign?”
The government pointed to Obi’s earlier vow to withdraw from the presidential race if it were shown he had left Anambra in debt, as well as a separate pledge, made while he was governor, to resign if workers went unpaid on schedule. It claimed he had broken both commitments.
“He (Obi) vowed to quit the presidential race if proven he left Anambra in debt,” the statement read. “As governor, he vowed to resign if workers weren’t paid on time. He broke both. He left office in 2014 with heavier arrears.”
The post was accompanied by a letter dated April 25, 2006, purportedly signed by Chuks Iloegbunam, who served as Obi’s Chief of Staff at the time. This publication has not been able to independently verify the letter, and efforts to reach Iloegbunam for comment are ongoing.
The letter, titled “Gubernatorial Prerogative,” reportedly made a “special appeal” to Obi to clear salary arrears owed to staff of the Anambra State Water Corporation, citing among other things a monthly wage bill of roughly ₦15 million and workers not having been paid since February.
Portions of the letter, as circulated, read: “Since it is Your Excellency’s unchanging desire to achieve a better future for our children and children’s children, please, Sir, bear in mind that officials of the Water Corporation also have children who are looking to your compassionate leadership… The monthly salary of the Water Corporation comes to something around N15 million every month. Because you have a most busy schedule, I appeal to you to please include the Water Corporation in the league of Government parastatals that are paid through subventions.”
The letter reportedly invoked Obi’s own campaign manifesto, in which he had pledged to resign “if there is any case where workers are not paid as and when due,” and closed with an appeal: “Water Corporation workers were last paid in February. Please rectify this anomaly so that you can forge ahead with the good work you are doing.”
Notably, Obi had been in office for only about five weeks when the letter was allegedly written. Obi was sworn in on March 17, 2006 suggesting the arrears referenced may have predated his administration and been inherited from his predecessor.
In a follow-up post, the state government said Iloegbunam had “berated” his former principal.
The exchange is the latest chapter in an ongoing row between Governor Charles Soludo’s administration and Obi over the state’s financial standing when Obi left office in March 2014. On September 17, the state’s Commissioner for Information and Value Reorientation, Dr Law Mefor, issued a detailed statement titled “Gov Peter Obi and Record of Public Debt in Anambra: Facts Beyond Propaganda and Lies,” alleging that Obi left behind outstanding external loans along with unpaid salary, pension and gratuity arrears.
According to the government, eight external loans contracted under Obi’s administration carried an outstanding balance of ₦127.4 billion as of June 30, 2026, at the official exchange rate. Mefor said Obi had taken on $123.77 million in external debt for projects spanning malaria control, erosion management, education and healthcare, and that the current administration continues to service these loans, with hundreds of millions of naira deducted monthly from the state’s federal allocation.
Mefor also said the government had verified unpaid salary, gratuity and pension arrears owed to retired teachers and Water Corporation staff, and rejected Obi’s claim of having left over ₦2.13 billion in an ecological fund account at a First Bank branch in Awka arguing the account in question was actually an Internally Generated Revenue–Consolidated Revenue Account that never held such a balance.
Obi, now the presidential candidate of the Nigeria Democratic Congress, has pushed back on the state government’s allegations, maintaining that he left office with no unpaid salaries, pensions, gratuities, or outstanding obligations to contractors whose work had been processed and certified. He said his administration cleared more than ₦35 billion in historical gratuities and arrears, and reiterated his earlier pledge to end his presidential campaign if the state government could produce proof that he left behind debts or unpaid contractors.
Bayo Onanuga, Special Adviser to President Bola Tinubu on Information and Strategy, has since called on Obi to make good on that pledge, arguing that the Anambra government had presented him with concrete facts and figures.
Obi’s media aide, Idris Zekeri Jnr, dismissed the Presidency’s involvement as that of a “meddlesome interloper,” adding that a team of former officials who worked under Obi was preparing a detailed rebuttal to the substantive claims raised by the state government.
The dispute over Anambra’s finances at the end of Obi’s tenure has resurfaced periodically since his successor, Willie Obiano, took over, and has intensified further as the 2027 presidential race draws nearer.
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