Anambra State Government says it is still repaying loans contracted by previous administrations, including that of former governor Peter Obi.
Commissioner for Finance, Izuchukwu Okafor, said deductions were still being made from the state’s federal allocation to service the inherited obligations.
Okafor disclosed this while speaking on the Voice of Ndi Anambra Podcast.
A video clip of the interview was posted on the Facebook page of Anambra State New Media on Monday.
The latest claim revives a long-running dispute over Anambra’s financial position at the end of Obi’s tenure in 2014.
The dispute dates back to the handover to Willie Obiano, with the then administration later putting inherited liabilities at about N185 billion.
Obi’s camp rejected the figure, maintaining that he left substantial cash and investments and did not leave the state indebted.
But official debt records show that Anambra had outstanding formal debt obligations around the end of Obi’s tenure.
The Debt Management Office put the state’s external debt at about $30.3 million and domestic debt at about N3 billion as of December 2013.
The controversy also extended to the assets Obi said he left behind.
He has repeatedly said he left $150 million in the state’s coffers, but fact-checkers have noted that no publicly available document conclusively establishes that exact figure.
The financial dispute resurfaced when Soludo took over from Obiano in 2022.
Soludo said the audited accounts showed that the state had more than N100 billion in debt as of December 2021, with only about N300 million to N400 million in cash.
Against that background, the latest statement by the finance commissioner places the current administration’s debt-reduction claims within a financial dispute that has followed Anambra’s last three administrations.
This is particularly over what was inherited by each government and how those obligations were subsequently serviced.
But the commissioner said the deductions could be seen in the state’s monthly Federation Account Allocation Committee statements.
According to him,
“Every month during our FAAC meetings, when you see the schedule of FAAC, you will notice there are substantial, significant deductions from our own FAAC because of loans previously borrowed by previous administrations.
“These loans were borrowed during the time of Peter Obi and Willie Obiano and other past governors.”
Obi governed Anambra from 2006 to 2014, before handing over to Obiano, who governed the state until 2022.
Chukwuma Soludo succeeded Obiano in March 2022.
But Okafor said the Soludo administration had not taken any commercial bank loan since assuming office, adding that its focus had been on reducing inherited liabilities.
“It is on record that this Soludo government has not borrowed a kobo from any commercial bank since the inception of this administration. Our domestic debt as of today is near zero balance,” he said.
He said the state had reduced its overall debt by more than 83 per cent under Soludo, while also clearing most of its domestic liabilities, including unpaid contracts, gratuities and pensions.
He said some of the outstanding obligations were external loans, including facilities obtained from the World Bank and other institutions, whose repayments continued to be deducted from the state’s federal allocation.
The commissioner also disclosed that the government had recently repaid a facility obtained from the Central Bank of Nigeria under the Commercial Agriculture Credit Scheme.
He said clearing the inherited liabilities had created more fiscal space for the state.
“In a nutshell, we have been able to create more fiscal space for Anambra State by paying off the backlog of numerous debts inherited from previous governments, starting from the time of Peter Obi,” Okafor said.
The latest development also comes against the backdrop of the increasingly political relationship between Obi and Soludo as both figures remain prominent in the build-up to the 2027 elections.
Obi is now the presidential candidate of the Nigeria Democratic Congress, while Soludo is seeking to consolidate his political influence in Anambra.
The two have previously clashed publicly over Obi’s promise to serve only one term if elected president.
In August 2025, Soludo criticised politicians who promise to spend only one term in office.
He said anyone making such a pledge should not be taken seriously because the Constitution allows elected presidents and governors to serve two terms.
