By Prof. Chiwuike Uba, PhD
I have examined the one-page financial handover document attributed to the Peter Obi administration, the latest three-page publication by the Anambra State Government dated September 16, 2026, and the various arguments that have followed. My conclusion is simple: the latest publication has not settled the debt question. It has made a proper reconciliation even more necessary.
The problem is not that the figures are necessarily false. The problem is that different figures are being presented as though they answer the same question when they do not. In public finance, dates, definitions and accounting classifications matter. A loan commitment is not necessarily a disbursement. A disbursement is not necessarily the same thing as outstanding debt. Outstanding debt at one date is not the same as outstanding debt twelve years later. And government liabilities are broader than conventional debt.
That distinction is crucial to the current Anambra debate.
The document circulated as the 2014 “Anambra State Handover Report” is itself revealing. The financial section is expressly described as a summary of the full financial statement. It reports local investments of ₦27 billion, foreign currency investments of US$156 million, certified State and MDA balances of ₦28.166 billion, an FGN-approved refund of ₦10 billion and estimated liabilities of ₦5 billion, producing what it calls a net balance of ₦86.666 billion.
But look at what is missing. There is no debt schedule. There is no line for domestic debt, external debt, outstanding principal on individual facilities, undisbursed loan commitments, guarantees or other contingent liabilities. Therefore, this single page cannot reasonably be presented as a complete statement of Anambra State’s financial position at handover.
But the reverse argument is equally important. The absence of a debt schedule on this page does not prove that Anambra was debt-free.
That is where the debate should begin, rather than end.
The latest publication from the Anambra State Government provides another set of figures. It identifies eight financing facilities signed between 2007 and 2013 and puts their aggregate original amounts at US$123.771 million. It then states that the outstanding balance on those facilities was US$92.353 million as at June 30, 2026, equivalent in the table to ₦127.372 billion.
At first glance, those numbers appear devastating. But an economist must resist the temptation to stop at the headline.
Look carefully at the table itself. The third column is headed “Loan Amount in USD as at Date Signed.” The fourth is headed “Outstanding Debt in USD as at 30 Jun 2026.”
Those are completely different measures.
The US$123.771 million is the aggregate of the original amounts associated with the facilities when they were signed. The US$92.353 million is the balance the State says remains outstanding on those facilities in June 2026.
Neither figure is the debt stock as at March 17, 2014.
And that missing figure is the elephant in the room.
If the purpose is to determine what Peter Obi actually handed over to Willie Obiano, then the relevant question is not simply how much financing was approved or contracted during Obi’s tenure. The relevant questions are: How much had actually been disbursed by March 17, 2014? How much principal remained outstanding on that date? How much of the approved financing remained undisbursed? Were further disbursements made after the change of administration? How much was subsequently repaid by each administration?
Without those answers, we are comparing apples with oranges and then arguing about the colour of the fruit.
There is an important independent benchmark which cannot simply be ignored. The Debt Management Office recorded Anambra’s external debt stock at US$30.324 million as at December 31, 2013. Its revised domestic debt table recorded ₦3.026 billion for Anambra at the same period.
Those are official debt-stock figures from an institution whose job is to track public debt. They do not necessarily provide the precise position on March 17, 2014, but they are much closer to the handover date than a June 2026 balance.
This produces an uncomfortable but necessary conclusion for both sides of the argument.
Anyone claiming that Anambra had absolutely no debt at the end of Peter Obi’s tenure has to reconcile that claim with the DMO’s official records.
But anyone claiming that Peter Obi handed over US$123.771 million in debt has an equally important burden of proof. The US$123.771 million in the new Anambra publication is not described as the outstanding balance on March 17, 2014. It is the sum of the original amounts listed at the dates the facilities were signed.
Those are not the same thing.
Consider, for example, a development loan approved for US$48 million. If only US$20 million had been disbursed by the handover date, it would be economically inaccurate to say that the State had already borrowed US$48 million simply because the agreement carried a US$48 million commitment. If another US$15 million was subsequently disbursed after the change of administration, it would also be inaccurate to attribute the entire US$35 million drawn over time to the administration that signed the original agreement.
This is not political semantics. It is basic public-sector debt accounting.
The same problem applies to the present claim that US$92.353 million remains outstanding in 2026. That figure may be perfectly genuine as a current balance. But it does not tell us how much was outstanding when Peter Obi left office. A debt balance can change because of additional disbursements, principal repayments, interest, exchange-rate movements, restructuring and other factors. A current balance cannot simply be projected backwards twelve years and assigned wholesale to the administration that originally signed the financing agreement.
There is another important issue in the present Anambra publication. Some of the facilities listed as State development financing were structured through the Federal Government rather than as conventional sovereign borrowing directly by Anambra from the World Bank. The World Bank’s documentation for the State Education Program Investment Project, for example, describes a US$150 million credit to the Federal Government of Nigeria, with funds to be disbursed to participating states, including Anambra, through subsidiary financing agreements. The project was also structured substantially around results based financing and disbursement linked indicators.
This distinction does not make a State obligation disappear. If Anambra entered into a valid subsidiary financing arrangement, the State could have a genuine repayment obligation to the Federal Government. But the legal and financial description matters. The Federal Republic of Nigeria being the sovereign borrower from IDA is not identical to saying that Anambra State itself was the sovereign borrower from the World Bank.
The precise State obligation therefore needs to be established from the relevant subsidiary agreements, disbursement records and debt accounts. This is another reason why simply adding original facility amounts and calling the total “Peter Obi’s debt” is insufficiently precise.
Indeed, the question becomes even more important for facilities signed in 2013, only months before the change of government. A financing agreement signed in 2013 does not tell us how much money had actually reached Anambra by March 17, 2014. Development programmes can involve staged disbursements linked to implementation milestones, procurement, counterpart funding or verified results. The World Bank’s SEPIP documentation, for example, explicitly describes a results based component and disbursement linked indicators.
The question is therefore straightforward: what amount had actually been drawn before the handover, what remained undisbursed, and who subsequently drew and utilised the balance?
Until those figures are disclosed, attributing the entire original facility to the administration that signed the agreement is financially imprecise.
There is another distinction that deserves attention. Debt contracted, debt disbursed, debt outstanding and total government liabilities are not interchangeable concepts.
A government may enter into a financing agreement without drawing the full commitment. A loan may be disbursed progressively. Principal may be repaid over many years. A State may also have obligations arising from salaries, pensions, gratuities, contractors’ certificates, court judgments, guarantees and other commitments that do not necessarily appear in a conventional external-debt table.
That is why the ₦5 billion liability figure in the 2014 summary also needs to be handled carefully. The document describes it as an estimated liability covering March salaries, pension and gratuity and approved certificates for already executed projects. It does not say on that page that ₦5 billion represents every liability the State had, nor does the page purport to be the complete financial statement. We should therefore neither inflate that figure into a comprehensive debt position nor dismiss it as one without examining the underlying accounts.
But there is another question that should not be lost in the politics of the debt figures: what did the State actually receive in return for these financing arrangements?
The evidence available does not establish that the development projects associated with these programmes were fictitious or produced no public benefits. World Bank documentation confirms Anambra’s participation in SEPIP and NEWMAP, while project documents record specific erosion interventions and planned works in places including Awka and Nnewi.
That matters because public borrowing cannot be evaluated solely by looking at the liability side of the balance sheet. We must also examine the asset and development side. What infrastructure was created? What communities benefited? What schools, health interventions, agricultural programmes, erosion control works or social infrastructure were delivered? How much was actually spent in Anambra? What was the State’s counterpart contribution? What proportion of the approved financing was disbursed? What remains unfinished? And what measurable economic or social returns did the projects generate?
If the projects were substantially implemented, then the proper public finance assessment is not simply “Obi borrowed money.” It is whether the borrowing was properly authorised, whether the financing was efficiently deployed, whether the projects represented value for money, what assets or public benefits resulted, and whether the resulting debt burden was fiscally sustainable.
Conversely, if any facility was substantially undisbursed, poorly implemented, abandoned or subjected to significant cost overruns, that too should be disclosed.
The public does not need only the liability column. It needs the complete balance sheet: what was borrowed, what was actually drawn, what was owed at handover, what was subsequently repaid, and, critically, what Anambra received in return.
There is a broader economic principle here. Not all public debt is economically equivalent. Borrowing to finance productive infrastructure or human capital investment whose benefits extend over many years is fundamentally different from borrowing to finance recurrent expenditure that disappears as soon as it is spent. The relevant test is therefore not simply whether government borrowed, but whether the borrowing financed assets or services whose benefits justified the fiscal obligation and whether the repayment profile was consistent with the State’s capacity to pay.
That is the standard that should apply to every administration.
The same discipline must apply to the latest State Government publication.
There is no doubt that the publication establishes something important: the Obi administration entered into financing arrangements for development projects, and significant balances on some of those facilities remain outstanding today. That fact should neither be denied nor obscured.
But there is a considerable distance between saying that and saying that US$92.353 million was the debt Peter Obi handed over in March 2014. The document, as presented, does not establish that proposition.
It is also important to distinguish between political responsibility and accounting responsibility. A governor may approve or sign financing arrangements on behalf of a State, but the debt is ultimately an obligation of the State, not a governor’s personal debt. If we are going to attribute responsibility across administrations, therefore, the standard should be evidence rather than rhetoric.
How much did Obi’s administration contract? How much was actually drawn before he left? How much remained outstanding? How much did the Obiano administration subsequently draw? How much did it repay? What did subsequent administrations inherit? What has been repaid since? What remains outstanding today?
Those are the questions that matter.
The most useful response from the Anambra State Government would therefore not be another press statement. It would be the publication of the complete 2014 financial handover report and supporting schedules, together with the debt statements for the eight facilities identified in its latest publication. For each facility, the State should disclose the original commitment, amount disbursed before March 17, 2014, outstanding principal on that date, subsequent disbursements, repayments by each administration and the current outstanding balance.
That would settle much of the argument.
Conversely, anyone using the one-page 2014 handover summary to argue that Anambra had zero debt should equally produce the complete financial statement and reconcile it with the DMO’s contemporaneous records. The DMO’s December 2013 records plainly show that Anambra had recorded external and domestic debt at that time.
In other words, neither side should be allowed to cherry-pick the number most convenient to its political narrative.
The US$123.771 million is not, on the face of the latest publication, the debt inherited in March 2014. It is the aggregate of original facility amounts at signing. The US$92.353 million is explicitly a June 2026 outstanding balance. And the one-page 2014 financial summary is not a comprehensive debt statement.
So where is the March 2014 figure?
That is the question.
Until that figure is produced and reconciled facility by facility, the public is being offered fragments of a financial history rather than the financial history itself.
And that is precisely why this debate should move beyond “zero debt,” “US$123.7 million borrowed,” and “US$92.35 million inherited.” Those slogans may serve political arguments, but they do not substitute for accounting evidence.
The facts are in the transaction records. They are in the loan agreements, subsidiary financing arrangements, disbursement schedules, debt ledgers, repayment records, audited accounts and DMO statements. They can tell us what was contracted, what was actually drawn, what was owed on March 17, 2014, what happened thereafter and what remains outstanding today.
Anambra does not need another war of numbers. It needs a reconciliation of the numbers.
That is the only way to separate inherited debt from subsequently incurred debt, loan commitments from actual borrowing, and political claims from verifiable public-finance facts.
And on an issue involving the financial history of an entire State, that is not too much to ask. It is the minimum standard the public deserves.