Peter Obi’s loans still being deducted from Anambra allocations — Commissioner

The Anambra State Government has said deductions are being made from the state’s monthly Federation Account Allocation Committee, FAAC, revenue to service loans it says were obtained by the administration of former Governor Peter Obi.

The Commissioner for Information and Value Reorientation, Law Mefor, disclosed this on Friday while speaking on Arise Television’s The Morning Show, amid the ongoing dispute over the financial records of Obi’s tenure.

Mefor said the fact that some of the facilities were guaranteed by the Federal Government did not mean they were grants or funds that did not require repayment.

“First and foremost, a loan is a loan, and whether it is sovereign or not, even an interest-free loan is still a loan. The FAAC allocations to Anambra State are being deducted every month to service the separate loans taken by the Peter Obi administration,” he said.

The commissioner said the loans were among eight external facilities guaranteed by the Federal Government, adding that states had the option of participating in the lending programmes.

He cited Governor Chukwuma Soludo’s decision not to participate in the Nigeria CARES loan from the World Bank as an example of a state government choosing whether to take such facilities.

“So Obi had the opportunity to either take or not to take. So if you take, you take the responsibility,” Mefor said.

He put the external facilities attributed to Obi’s administration at $123 million, arguing that the outstanding obligations should form part of any assessment of the former governor’s financial record.

Mefor said the loans were taken for various development programmes and insisted that the issue was not whether borrowing was inherently wrong, but whether Obi’s claim that he did not take loans was accurate.

“The point I’m trying to make is simple: he took loans, and he said he didn’t take,” he said.

The commissioner also rejected Obi’s claim that he left no financial liabilities for his successor, saying some of the obligations from the loans remained outstanding.

“And he said also that he did not pass down any financial liabilities that accrued from loans that he took. That is also not correct,” Mefor added.

The latest exchange followed Obi’s denial that he left Anambra with outstanding debts, salaries, pensions, gratuities or obligations to contractors when he handed over power in 2014.

The Anambra government has maintained that records from the Debt Management Office show eight external loans contracted during Obi’s tenure, with the outstanding balance put at about N127.4 billion as of June 30, 2026.

Obi had challenged the government to produce evidence contradicting his account, saying he would stop campaigning for the 2027 presidential election if it could establish that he left the state in debt.