A fresh political dispute has erupted over Peter Obi’s record as Anambra governor, with Aviation Minister Festus Keyamo accusing the former governor of making claims that require constant fact-checking.
Minister of Aviation and Aerospace Development Festus Keyamo has intensified his criticism of former Anambra State Governor Peter Obi as a growing dispute over the state’s historical debt obligations spills into the wider political debate ahead of the 2027 elections.
Keyamo, in a post on X, said Obi’s public statements should face continuous scrutiny, arguing that the former governor’s claims require frequent fact-checking.
“I see some suggestions that everyone is ‘obsessed’ about Peter Obi because we are always talking about him. I am sorry, but they miss the point. When someone lies per second, you also have to fact-check him per second,” Keyamo wrote.
He further alleged that Obi “got away with the lies in 2023,” while warning that his statements would receive closer scrutiny ahead of the next presidential election.
Keyamo added that the amount of attention directed at Obi was, in his view, linked to the frequency of what he described as false claims.
The comments came against the backdrop of a renewed dispute over Anambra State’s financial position at the end of Obi’s tenure as governor.
The Anambra State Government has released records showing that eight external loans linked to projects undertaken during or inherited by Obi’s administration had an outstanding balance of $92.35 million as of June 30, 2026. The state valued the outstanding balance at approximately N127.37 billion.
According to the state government’s revised figures, the loans originally amounted to approximately $123.77 million and were associated with projects covering areas including education, healthcare, erosion control, agriculture and community development.
The figures have, however, become the subject of a political and factual dispute.
Obi has rejected the allegation that he left Anambra with outstanding financial obligations of the nature being alleged by the current administration. He has maintained that when he left office in 2014, his administration had no outstanding salaries, pensions, gratuities or contractor obligations that were due for payment.
He has also released a handover document as part of his response to the allegations. Reports indicate that the document was presented as evidence of the state’s financial position at the end of his administration.
The controversy has been complicated by an earlier error in the figures published by the Anambra Government. The administration subsequently revised the figures, putting the original external loans at $123.77 million and the outstanding balance at $92.35 million, rather than the figures contained in its earlier communication.
At the centre of the dispute is an important distinction: the existence of outstanding loans associated with projects undertaken during an administration does not, by itself, establish whether the former governor personally left an unpaid liability in the sense alleged by his political opponents. Determining responsibility requires examination of the loan agreements, disbursement records, repayment schedules, debt-management records and the circumstances under which each facility was contracted.
The competing claims are therefore likely to remain tied to documentary evidence as the political debate intensifies ahead of 2027.