Otti — I know Obi left $155m in Anambra coffers

An unlikely witness weighs in on Anambra’s oldest political argument

Governor Alex Otti of Abia State has stepped, perhaps unexpectedly, into a financial dispute that isn’t even about his own state.

He is confirming that he personally knows, as the former CEO of Fidelity Bank at the time, that Peter Obi left approximately $155 million in Anambra State coffers when his governorship ended in 2014.

ADVERTISEMENT

ValidViewNetwork can confirm that Otti’s account is not new testimony manufactured for this year’s political moment.

It recycles a claim he first wrote publicly in June 2020, well before Obi’s current NDC presidential candidacy made Anambra’s finances a live campaign battleground.

This is a detail that matters considerably for how much weight the claim should carry.

Why the source matters more than the number

Findings show Otti’s account carries unusual evidentiary weight precisely because of his position: as Fidelity Bank’s CEO during the actual handover period, he claims direct, first-hand knowledge of advising Obi to convert the funds from naira to dollars specifically to protect against currency depreciation.

That was a granular, operational detail that is far harder to fabricate than a generic political endorsement would do.

Obi’s own account, and where the numbers actually diverge

According to reports gotten by ValidViewNetwork, Obi has separately rejected claims that he left Anambra with $123 million in debt, insisting instead that even under that worst-case framing, he left over $150 million in funds earning roughly $10 million annually.

The funds he says could have settled any debt while preserving capital. He specifically objected to combining an alleged debt figure with the funds left behind as, in his words, “very wrong public accounting.”

What’s actually at stake in this argument

ValidViewNetwork gathered that this dispute is not simply nostalgic score-settling, it’s a live proxy war over Obi’s core 2027 campaign credential: fiscal prudence and competent stewardship of public funds.

Otti’s intervention, whatever his motives, provides Obi’s camp with a genuinely independent, technically informed corroboration at a moment when Anambra’s current government has been actively contesting that exact narrative.

Whether Otti’s account settles the argument or simply escalates it into a longer, more technical fight over Nigeria’s notoriously opaque state-level public accounting will likely become clearer as Anambra’s current administration responds. ValidViewNetwork reports.