Emmanuel S.K. Ibeoha

This makes no sense whatsoever. This is a big fat lie. Abia Daily has investigated this issue. AND THIS IS WHAT WE FOUND👇👇👇👇 The Anambra Water Corporation dispute was inherited by Peter Obi, addressed in part during his tenure, and only taken off the court list in 2024. It is not evidence that he created the crisis. 17 March 2006: Peter Obi was sworn in as Governor of Anambra State. February–25 April 2006: Water Corporation staff had last been paid in February 2006. On 25 April 2006, less than six weeks into the new administration, the Governor’s Chief of Staff, Chuks Iloegbunam, formally drew attention to that backlog and asked that the corporation be placed on regular subvention. The arrears were therefore already in existence at the point Obi assumed office. They were not opened by him. 2000–2005: Subsequent official accounts of the later court payout treated a substantial part of the Water Corporation debt as having accumulated from about 2000, through the administrations of Chinwoke Mbadinuju and Chris Ngige. The utility’s decline was structural and predated 2006. 2006–2008: The Obi administration subjected the swollen wage-bill claims to consultant review (MEDAL). That was an attempt to separate verified entitlements from a disordered backlog, not an act of neglect. 2007: The same later record that is now used against Obi also states that his administration released about ₦200 million as part payment of Water Corporation and related arrears which it had both inherited and then carried. That is a documented payment into the file. April 2009 / December 2009: AUPCTRE referred a trade dispute to the Minister of Labour. The union’s own claim was already multi-year: 48 months’ salaries and eight years’ leave allowance for Water Corporation staff, and 25 months’ salaries plus eight years’ leave for ANSEPA staff. Early Industrial Arbitration Panel figures were calculated as at December 2009. Those pleadings describe a long backlog. They do not describe a debt invented in March 2006. 2013: While the labour dispute continued, the Obi administration moved to rehabilitate water infrastructure, including the Greater Onitsha Water Scheme and the long-abandoned Ogidi scheme, with planned extensions to Obosi, Ogidi, Nkpor, Nkwelle Ezunaka and Umunya. That was an attempt to restore the utility itself, not merely to argue about personnel. 17 March 2014: Obi left office. 14 July 2014: The National Industrial Court issued a garnishee order of about ₦1.86 billion against state accounts. That enforcement came after Obi’s tenure. The succeeding Obiano administration announced payment of that sum and itself described the arrears as stretching back to about 2000. 3 June 2019 and January 2022: Further National Industrial Court enforcement followed under later governments. The file remained live after 2014. 6 February 2024: The Soludo administration and AUPCTRE signed an out-of-court settlement at the Office of the Head of Service, Awka, bringing the 14-year legal contest to a close. 2026: The same government that signed that settlement later revived the closed file as a political charge against Obi. Conclusion: The corporation was treated as shut down around 2012 during Obi’s tenure, and the labour question was not finally regularised until 2024. It was an ongoing legal dispute and the Anambra State Govt. under Mr. Peter Obi could not possibly engage in subjudice by paying monies towards a case still in court. Those facts do not convert an inherited, multi-administration collapse into a crisis of Obi’s making. He met unpaid staff already in arrears. His government paid into that debt, reviewed the claims, and attempted to revive water schemes. Later administrations continued the litigation. Governor Soludo settled the case in February 2024 and subsequently deployed a concluded matter as a political instrument. The documentary timeline does not support the claim that Peter Obi created this dispute #MakeAlaIgboGreatAgain