A 20-year-old memo from Peter Obi’s first months as governor of Anambra State has become the latest document deployed in the escalating dispute over the financial record he left behind.
The state government is using it to challenge his claim that workers’ salary obligations were cleared before he left office.
The memo, dated April 25, 2006, and attributed to Obi’s then Chief of Staff, Chuks Iloegbunam, appealed to the governor to release funds for workers of the Anambra State Water Corporation.
According to the memo, the workers they had not been paid since February.
The document was released by the Anambra State Government on Tuesday as it challenged Obi to withdraw from the 2027 presidential race if his claim of leaving the state without financial liabilities is disproved.
The state’s New Media Office asked: “When will Peter Obi quit the presidential campaign?”
It recalled two separate pledges attributed to the former governor.
These include the one made during his governorship campaign concerning prompt payment of workers and another made recently in response to allegations that his administration left Anambra in debt.
The state government said Obi had pledged that he would resign as governor “if there is any case where workers are not paid as and when due.”
It alleged that the NDC presidential candidate failed to keep that promise, just as it said his more recent pledge to stop campaigning if he was shown to have left the state in debt was now being tested.
The 2006 document specifically concerned the Water Corporation, whose monthly wage bill was put at about N15 million.
In the letter, Iloegbunam appealed to Obi to place the corporation among government agencies funded through regular subvention.
He said that would allow its workers to not have to repeatedly visit the Governor’s Office over unpaid salaries.
“Your Excellency, 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,” the memo stated.
The author also invoked Obi’s campaign commitment, telling the governor that resolving the salary problem would enable him to remain consistent with his pledge on the payment of workers.
The state government’s decision to produce the document marks a shift in the argument with Obi.
The accusations had initially centred largely on loans and the financial position of Anambra at the end of his tenure.
Obi has maintained that his administration systematically cleared more than N35 billion in historical gratuities and arrears and handed over a state without outstanding salaries, pensions or gratuities.
He has also said contractors whose projects were duly executed and certified had been paid.
He subsequently challenged the Anambra Government to produce evidence contradicting his account, declaring.
“If anybody can establish anything to the contrary, I will stop campaigning”, he had said.
The state has since expanded its response beyond the disputed salary records.
Commissioner for Information and Value Reorientation, Law Mefor, said the government had identified eight external borrowing facilities which it attributed to Obi’s administration and put their outstanding balance at N127.4 billion as of June 30, 2026.
The government said the loans were connected with projects in areas including healthcare, education, malaria control, erosion management and agricultural development.
Mefor also disputed Obi’s claim that more than N2.13 billion had been left untouched in a First Bank account for the Oko/Umuchiana erosion crisis.
He said the account identified by the former governor was an Internally Generated Revenue Consolidated Revenue Account rather than an ecological fund account.
The commissioner said a certified statement obtained by the state showed that the account had never recorded the amount claimed by Obi.
The controversy subsequently drew the Presidency into the dispute, with Special Adviser to President Bola Tinubu on Information and Strategy, Bayo Onanuga, asking Obi to honour his pledge to quit the 2027 race if the claims against his administration are established.
Obi’s media aide, Idris Zekeri Jnr, rejected the intervention.
He described the Presidency as a “meddlesome interloper” and said former officials who served under Obi were preparing a detailed response to the substantive allegations.
The latest claims revive an old problem surrounding the assessment of Obi’s eight years in office ahead of the 2027 presidential election in which he is a candidate of the NDC.
The document has not been independently authenticated while Iloegbunam h yet to issue a response.
