TD The political dispute between the Anambra State Government and former governor Peter Obi has intensified, with the state government’s official media platform releasing a 2006 letter accusing the former governor of failing to honour a campaign pledge to resign if workers were not paid their salaries as and when due.
The letter (attached below), dated April 25, 2006, was signed by the previous Chief of Staff, Chuks Iloegbunam.
Iloegbunam had appealed to the newly inaugurated governor to address salary arrears owed workers of the Anambra State Water Corporation.
Obi had assumed office on March 17, 2006, according to the Anambra State Government’s own historical record.
The letter stated that Water Corporation workers had last received their salaries in February 2006, shortly before Obi became governor.
It urged the governor to place the corporation on government subvention to ensure regular payment of salaries.
Most significantly, the letter reminded Obi of what it described as his campaign manifesto pledge to resign if government workers were not paid when due.
“Fundamentally, your campaign manifesto pledges that Your Excellency will resign if there is any case where workers are not paid as at when due,” the letter stated.
The Anambra government’s current presentation of the document is intended to challenge Obi’s record on workers’ salaries.
It is also meant to befuddle his subsequent claims about the financial condition he inherited.
Timeline Raises Questions
The publication of the 2006 letter has also triggered a counterargument from observers and supporters.
They point to the dates: Obi took office on March 17, 2006, while the letter was written on April 25, barely six weeks later.
They argue that the document demonstrates that the Water Corporation’s salary crisis predated Obi’s administration rather than being created by it.
The letter itself supports at least part of that chronology: it says workers were last paid in February, before Obi assumed office.
The more contentious question is what happened to the arrears during Obi’s eight-year tenure.
Recent accounts circulating in the political dispute show that Obi’s administration subsequently released about ₦200 million toward the Water Corporation arrears.
However, the dispute later entered litigation.
Those claims require documentary verification before being treated as established fact.
A historical account of the dispute also indicates that significant Water Corporation arrears remained unresolved and that the issue eventually involved arbitration and court proceedings.
Government Says Obi Left Arrears
The Soludo administration has continued to argue that significant liabilities remained when Obi left office in 2014.
According to statements attributed to the current administration, arrears involving former Water Corporation workers persisted through subsequent governments.
They were eventually the subject of settlement arrangements under Governor Charles Soludo.
The state government has also accused Obi of making broader claims that he cleared all inherited salary, pension and gratuity arrears.
It further alleged that some liabilities attributed to Peter Obi’s tenure remained outstanding.
Obi and his supporters dispute that characterization.
He argued that many of the liabilities being discussed originated under previous administrations and that his government took steps to address them.
Political Dimension
The renewed dispute comes as Obi remains a prominent political figure ahead of the 2027 presidential election.
Meanwhile, Soludo, a bitter antagonist of Peter Obi, heads the Anambra government.
The state government’s post also linked the Water Corporation controversy to Obi’s more recent statement that he would reconsider his presidential bid if evidence showed that he left Anambra with outstanding debts.
The argument has therefore moved beyond the historical question of unpaid Water Corporation salaries into a broader political battle.
It involves Obi’s eight-year record as governor and his claims about Anambra’s finances at the end of his tenure.
The 2006 letter establishes that the Water Corporation salary problem existed shortly after Obi assumed office.
It does not, on its own, establish how much of the arrears he inherited, how much accumulated during his administration, how much was subsequently paid, or the precise liability outstanding when he left office in 2014.
Those questions require examination of the state’s payroll records, appropriation and payment documents, arbitration and court records, and the financial statements covering the successive administrations.
The Record Tells a Different Story
The 25 April 2006 letter dramatically changes the narrative.
Peter Obi was sworn in as governor on 17 March 2006.
Yet barely six weeks later, a former Chief of Staff was writing to him that Water Corporation workers had last been paid in February 2006.
The implication is difficult to ignore: the salary crisis was already in existence when Obi took office.
Obi, therefore, did not walk into a functioning system and create the arrears. He inherited a problem that was already there.
More importantly, the letter itself shows that the new administration was being pressed to act on the problem almost immediately.
It specifically asked the governor to bring the Water Corporation into the group of government parastatals receiving regular subventions so that its workers could be paid.
That is hardly evidence of an administration deliberately creating salary arrears and ignoring them.
Rather, it shows an administration confronting an inherited financial obligation and being urged to find a mechanism for settling it.
The subsequent history of the dispute also matters.
Obi’s administration made efforts to deal with inherited liabilities, but the Water Corporation claims eventually became subject to industrial and judicial proceedings.
Once the matter entered litigation, settlement was no longer simply a question of political will or a governor issuing an instruction to pay.
The legal claims, amounts due and obligations of government became matters for adjudication and enforcement.
This is the critical distinction that is often lost in the political argument.
Conclusion
There is a difference between inheriting arrears, failing to completely eliminate them during a tenure, and actually creating those arrears.
What the 2006 document establishes most clearly is the starting point: the Water Corporation salary crisis did not begin with Peter Obi’s administration.
The political dispute may continue, but the chronology cannot be rewritten.
A governor who assumed office on 17 March 2006 was being asked on 25 April 2006 to address workers who had already gone without salary since February.
That does not absolve any administration from responsibility for what remained unpaid.
But it does make one claim considerably harder to sustain: that Peter Obi created the Water Corporation salary arrears himself.
The evidence instead points to a governor who inherited the problem, moved to address it, and subsequently faced a dispute that became entangled in litigation.
Attributing their origin to Obi is a materially different claim—and the April 2006 letter itself points in the opposite direction.
See the April 24, 2006, letter below:
