Obi vs Soludo: Deconstructing The Anambra Debt Claims – Revisionist History

Gov. Charles Soludo promised to release a second part of his essay on Obi. I am surprised many people are not aware that that was what he just released through Dr Law Mefor under the guise of a press release. After reading it, my first impulse is: is this what has caused him sleepless nights for almost four years?

In public governance, nothing exposes intellectual bankruptcy quite like the weaponisation of revisionist history and economic illiteracy. The released press statement was a weak attempt to rewrite the financial legacy of former Governor Peter Obi. The intervention, cloaked in self-righteous appeals to transparency, is a poorly disguised exercise in political propaganda. It relies on manipulated metrics, profound category errors regarding multilateral development credits, and an absurd attempt to judge historical public expenditures through the prism of today’s inflated exchange rates, as well as many erroneous claims. We shall take them one after another.

I do not want to go into what they claimed Obi spent or did not spend, which they put at about $4.05 billion (equivalent to ₦5.4 trillion at the current exchange rate). Is this not madness? Would they tell us the cumulative budget size of Obi in eight years? This is the surest way towards appreciating the idiocy of this claim – $4.05 billion!

Another sure means of comparing what Obi received or did not receive was the statement by President Ahmed Tinubu that governors today receive four times more than what their predecessors received. Obi was not his predecessor; if we take it down to Obi’s era, they are probably receiving six times what Obi received. Yet, Soludo has not done up to 20% of what Obi did. We are not judging him yet, because his tenure is still running.

The bogus release reads: “No government will ever finish the work of development. HE Peter Obi still left a state without any functioning urban or rural water schemes; increasing insecurity and increased poverty, ostensibly dead public schools and dead public hospitals with grossly inadequate teachers and medical personnel (indeed 44% of all communities in Anambra, 78 out of 179) did not and still do not have any public primary schools (and this administration is only beginning to close the gap).”

It is amusing to watch the current administration, through agents like Dr Law Mefor, attempt to rewrite history and claim that Peter Obi left Anambra State without functioning water, education, health or urban infrastructure. The records starkly contradict these baseless assertions. In the water sector, while they claim zero infrastructure, Obi’s administration actively resuscitated dormant water schemes. I remember when Mr Mac Rae, the EU envoy to Nigeria, came to commission a water project in Nnewi.

Whenever the issue of education arises, I make one simple request: bring your record, and let us compare. Peter Obi’s investments in education as Governor of Anambra State remain the most comprehensive educational interventions by any Nigerian governor, laying a foundational block that spanned from primary schools to tertiary institutions.

His administration achieved made history  by returning mission schools to their original proprietors, backed by over ₦2 billion in grants, constructing five-classroom blocks across all 177 communities, renovating hundreds of dilapidated schools, and installing boreholes in over 300 schools. Furthermore, he pioneered digital transformation by distributing around 40,000 computers, equipping 450 secondary schools with Microsoft Academies, connecting institutions to the internet, providing generators and libraries, and supplying two buses and sick bays to every public secondary school.

Teacher welfare and standards were similarly prioritised through the recruitment of thousands of teachers, with two years of upfront salaries secured, clearing pension and gratuity arrears, and restoring promotions, while higher education underwent an unprecedented overhaul, with massive infrastructure and multibillion-naira funding injected into Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu University, Nwafor Orizu College of Education, the College of Agriculture, Mgbakwu, and the brand-new teaching hospital built from scratch. After him, no block has been added to the state’s higher institutions.

Beyond government-owned schools, Obi extended crucial financial support to private tertiary institutions like Madonna, Paul, Tansian, and Peter Universities, while institutionalising a policy of rewarding academic excellence with ₦1 million for every Anambra indigene who graduated with a First Class degree.

Education under his watch was never measured by empty political speeches, but by measurable infrastructure, comprehensive teacher welfare, cutting-edge technology, and profound impacts on young people that even continued through his private philanthropic interventions long after leaving office.

The challenge, therefore, remains simple: bring your record on education and let us compare project for project, school for school, investment for investment, and impact for impact. Since he left, all schools in Anambra are complaining of things as basic as study aids and chalk. Obi gave money directly to schools for those things, but our professor, unmindful of “Nzamacolgy”, prefers acting through agents and those pliable to their terms.

They also talked about health. Peter Obi’s administration fundamentally transformed the healthcare sector in Anambra State through strategic investments, extensive institutional partnerships, and the provision of critical medical infrastructure.

Moving beyond rhetoric, his government built the Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu University Teaching Hospital in Awka from scratch to full accreditation, established the Joseph Nwilo Heart Centre for open-heart surgeries at St Joseph’s Hospital, Adazi-Nnukwu, and installed the state’s first public dialysis machine at General Hospital, Onitsha.

By partnering with mission-owned institutions, his administration injected billions of naira into major health facilities- including Iyienu Hospital, Ogidi, now a teaching hospital; Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital, Ihiala, proposed as a teaching hospital; and St Charles Borromeo Hospital, Onitsha, now a teaching hospital, Amichi Diocesan Hospital, Holy Rosary, Waterside, Onitsha, St. Joseph, Adazi-Nnukwu – to upgrade them into centres of excellence. Though owned by missions, Obi’s argument has always been that they serve the people of the state.

Furthermore, effective collaboration with global partners like the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation earned Anambra a $1 million grant in 2013 for excellence in polio eradication and immunisation, which was judiciously matched to construct ten maternal and child health centres that significantly expanded rural healthcare access.

He renovated many general hospitals and built new ones. Under him, 12 health institutions in the state gained accreditation, from none before him. Since he left, no new health institution has gained accreditation.

Beyond water, education and health, the administration’s legacy in urban development and security stands tall against Soludo’s revisionist claims. Instead of mere roads, which I do not have any reason to deny, even though their qualities are horrible, has he seen development more than that?

Obi partnered with UN-Habitat to craft comprehensive structure plans for Awka, Onitsha, and Nnewi, laying a solid foundation for modern urban regeneration. I was with him in Nairobi when he was engaging them. It was in response to, and implementation of, the structure plans that he, for example, started the three shopping malls in Onitsha, Awka, and Nnewi.

In fact, in 2010, following the massive clean-up of Onitsha, the rehabilitation of roads, the wonders Obi did at the Second Niger Bridge, the development of Harbour Industrial Site and the return of many industries that had left the place, UN-Habitat chose the commercial city of Onitsha as one of the five fast-growing cities in the world whose photographs were formally displayed in Shanghai, China, in October during a World Exhibition to mark UN-Habitat Day. Again, I attended the programme.

It was Obi who opened up all parts of Anambra through access roads. On security, rather than leaving a vacuum, heavy investments in logistics and armoured personnel carriers earned the state public acclaim, famously leading the then Inspector-General of Police, Abubakar Mohammed, to name Anambra the safest state in the federation.

Former Commissioners of Police who served in the state, such as Amusa Bello, Philemon Leha and Usman Alkali Baba, similarly attested to how Obi’s prompt logistical funding, stakeholder engagement, and decisive support dismantled criminal syndicates like those entrenched in the notorious Akpaka Forest. As Retired Major General John Enenche noted regarding those efforts, Obi provided the strong political will and operational backing needed to restore peace.

Do you know that, till today, it was only Obi that bought Armoured Personnel Carriers and armoured patrol vehicles for security agencies in the state? Today, almost all the policies he brought out, such as the demolition of the houses of kidnappers, still remain the security blueprint of the state. Under him, criminal tenants did not occupy any part of the state, unlike today, where they are occupying 20 per cent of the state.

The state government attempts to weaponise Debt Management Office (DMO) records by claiming that Anambra State inherited or left behind external debt obligations totalling $92,353,182.00 (or N127.37 billion as of 30 June 2026), while vaguely alleging cumulative borrowings. What we witnessed is mischaracterising concessionary multilateral credits as reckless borrowing.

Today, the former Director-General of the Debt Management Office, Dr. Abraham Nwankwo, will tell you that it was only Peter Obi who never visited him to lobby for state borrowings or bond issuances. When you look at the astronomical sums borrowed by his contemporaries – many of whom achieved far less – the contrast leaves you completely perplexed. By the same token, the former Managing Director of the Bank of Industry, Ms. Evelyn Oputu, can attest that Obi was the first governor who proactively visited her to discuss how the bank could support industrialists in the state, with many local entrepreneurs ultimately benefiting from that partnership.