Some of you forgot about me. That's fair.
Some of you noticed the quiet and thought: where did that annoying guy with the 3,000-word posts and the budget PDFs go? Did they finally get him? Did he run out of documents? Was the whole thing a campaign after all?
None of the above.
On 1 October I said goodbye, and I meant it. But before that, in this same subreddit, I made you a promise with a date on it: the Obi Files, 15 October.
Today is 15 October.
Back in September, a lot of you asked one question, in a hundred different ways: "You did Tinubu. Will you really do Obi the same way, or is that just talk?"
Today you get the answer, and you don't have to take my word for it.
You also had fifteen days with the Tinubu Files. Fifteen days to tear them apart, check every page, redo every sum. Where we got something wrong, the correction is printed on the page, dated, with our original words still visible above it. Nothing is quietly deleted. That deal holds for this file too.
When we published on Tinubu, we were "opposition". When we published on Obi, we were "APC". I said then that we don't stand on any side. I hope by now that sentence needs no defending.
Same method. Same grades. Same refusal to say one word more than the paper says. Different man.
Here is one thing from the file that, as far as we can find, nobody has reported before.
FILE 01: "I LEFT WHEN I BECAME GOVERNOR"
Obi's account has always been simple: he stepped away from his family's businesses when he took office in March 2006.
His London company is Next International (UK) Ltd, company number 03199858. Its filings are public, free, and you can open every one of them yourself.
4 July 2006. Two months into his governorship, the company files its annual return. It lists one director: Peter Obi.
Read the annual return — Companies House
20 June 2007. Six days after the Supreme Court gives him back his office, the next return lists him again as "Director 1", and as the holder of 1 share. The other 999 belong to Next International (Nigeria).
Read the next annual return — Companies House
22 November 2007. The company files its 2006 accounts. Page 2 reads:
"Approved by the board on 22 November 2007 / And signed on their behalf by: / Peter Obi, Director"
Read the 2006 accounts — Companies House
He was the sitting Governor of Anambra State that day.
16 June 2008. Companies House finally receives the form ending his directorship, dated back to 16 May 2008.
Read the directorship termination — Companies House
WHY IT MATTERS
The Constitution does not stop a governor owning a business. It stops him running one. The Fifth Schedule, paragraph 2(b): a full-time public officer shall not "engage or participate in the management or running of any private business".
Approving a company's accounts is what directors do.
WHAT RUNS IN HIS FAVOUR
You get this part too, at the same length.
- The November 2007 accounts were filed electronically by the company's agents. The "signature" is a typed name, not his handwriting.
- In August 2006 the company appointed a full-time director, his brother Josephat, as Chief Operating Officer.
- The handwritten signatures on the company's paper filings from 2006 onwards are not Obi's.
- From 2010 the company was dormant.
So the document shows what the company told the UK registry. It does not prove that Obi personally saw or approved those accounts. Only the company's board records could settle that, and they have never been published.
No court, no tribunal and no Code of Conduct Bureau has made any finding on this. We asked Obi's side for comment repeatedly from September, and we have had no answer.
ALSO IN THE FILE
- The full Pandora Papers trail, read from ICIJ's own database rather than from the headlines, including where the original reporting got it wrong.
- A Nigerian company registered in 2021 in which the beneficial-ownership register lists Obi at 50%.
- The ₦75 billion he says he left. Anambra's own 2014 budget book backs the size of that figure, and we say so plainly.
- "Owing nobody", set against the Debt Management Office tables and the courts.
- 94 of his own statistics, each tested against the dataset it came from. 45 hold up or come close. 28 don't.
500 parts. 63 supplements. 7 sections. Around 226,000 words. 662 sources.
Every finding numbered. Every source named, saved and fingerprinted, so that if a page disappears from the internet tomorrow, the record of it doesn't.
Obi supporters will find things in it they won't like. Obi critics will find things in it they won't like either, because the record supports him in places where his opponents have been loudest. That is not balance for the sake of balance. It is what happens when you follow the paper instead of the crowd.
So here's my last request, the same one as always.
Don't trust Dr Vero. Check him. Open the four filings above before you read a single word of ours. Then open the file, and do to it what you did to the Tinubu Files. Break it if you can. If you find an error, post it here. It will be corrected in public, on the page, under your eyes.
Two files down. One to go: Atiku, 30 October.
The annoying guy didn't disappear. He was reading.
THE OBI FILES — verorecord.com/dossier-obi
Truth has a paper trail.