By Our Correspondent
Abia State Governor, Alex Otti, has countered the position of the Anambra State Government over the financial legacy of former Governor Peter Obi, insisting that Obi left substantial funds for the state when he left office in 2014.
Otti, who was Chief Executive Officer of Diamond Bank at the time, said he stood by his 2020 account that Obi had invested about $155 million of Anambra State funds in three Nigerian banks before leaving office.
He made the clarification during an interview with Arise Television while responding to renewed questions over a statement he published on June 8, 2020.
According to Otti, his intervention was intended to demonstrate that public officials could be prudent in managing government resources.
“They are referring to what I wrote in 2020. I think that was June 8, 2020. I was using it to prove that it’s still possible for people to be prudent in government,” he said.
Otti recalled that Obi had approached him while he was still governor and indicated that he intended to keep the funds in naira.
He said he advised the former governor to convert the money into dollars because of the anticipated depreciation of the naira.
“It’s an account of what happened. And I had said that as the CEO of the bank at that time, he was going to leave the money in naira, and when he came to me I said no, this naira you want to keep, naira will keep losing value.
“So you probably want to convert it to dollars, and it was converted,” Otti said.
He added: “So it’s a statement of fact, and it’s something that happened several years, six years ago. So I haven’t spoken again, and so that’s what they are referring to.”
Otti’s position comes amid a renewed dispute between Obi and the administration of Governor Chukwuma Soludo over what the former governor left behind financially.
Otti, in his latest intervention, maintained that the existence of any alleged liabilities did not invalidate his account of the funds he said Obi left behind.
In his 2020 article, titled “The Triumph of Profligacy Over Prudence,” Otti had written that about $155 million was invested in the tier-two capital of three Nigerian banks, with maturities of about five years and interest rates of up to nine per cent.
He had said the funds, which were worth about N25 billion at the time, demonstrated the benefits of financial prudence and literacy.
The Soludo administration has maintained that Obi left outstanding liabilities for Anambra State. The state government, through Commissioner for Information and Value Reorientation, Law Mefor, has released loan records which it said showed that Obi’s administration incurred external loans, with an outstanding balance of about $123.77 million as of June 30, 2026.
The state government has also argued that claims that Obi left money in government accounts do not erase outstanding loan obligations incurred during his tenure. A senior aide to Soludo similarly said records showed that eight external loans were obtained between 2006 and 2014.
Obi, however, has rejected the allegations, insisting that he left office without owing salaries, pensions, gratuities or contractors whose works had been executed, certified and verified. He has also maintained that he left substantial funds in government accounts.
The controversy has therefore placed two competing accounts of Anambra’s financial position at the end of Obi’s tenure in the public domain: Otti’s account of substantial funds invested for the state, and the Soludo administration’s claim that outstanding external loan obligations remained from Obi’s tenure.
