Umuahia/Abuja – Abia State Governor Alex Otti has said he stands by his June 2020 statement regarding former Anambra State Governor Peter Obi’s handling of approximately $155 million in state funds during his tenure.
Otti made the clarification during an interview with Arise Television on Friday, responding to renewed questions about the statement amid the ongoing public dispute between Obi and the current Anambra State Government over the financial records left behind in 2014.
The governor, who was Chief Executive Officer of Diamond Bank at the time Obi was concluding his administration, recalled that the former Anambra governor had approached him about preserving surplus state funds. Obi had initially planned to leave the money in naira, but Otti advised against it because of the naira’s continuous loss of value.
“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,” Otti said. “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 and 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. So it’s a statement of fact.”
Otti maintained that he personally assisted in converting the funds into dollars, amounting to about $155 million, which were then invested across three Nigerian banks, including in Eurobonds and Tier-2 capital instruments. Some of the investments, he noted, had maturities extending over several years. He stressed that the money belonged to Anambra State and not to Obi personally.
The Abia governor had first detailed the transaction in a June 8, 2020 newspaper column titled “The Triumph of Profligacy Over Prudence,” in which he cited Obi’s approach as an example of fiscal prudence that protected public resources from currency depreciation.
Otti’s reaffirmation comes as Obi continues to reject claims by the Anambra State Government under Governor Chukwuma Soludo that his administration left significant external loans and other liabilities. Obi has insisted he left office without owing salaries, pensions, gratuities or verified contractor payments and that he did not borrow commercially on behalf of the state.
The governor of Abia State said the recent allegations from Anambra did not invalidate his earlier firsthand account. He challenged the state government to publish a full debt profile if it disputed the record of savings and investments left behind.
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