Obi says he left his UK company when he became governor. Its 2006 accounts were signed off in his name in November 2007

On 22 November 2007, a London company called Next International (UK) Limited approved its accounts for the year to 31 December 2006 and delivered them to Companies House, the UK register of companies. The last lines of the balance sheet read: "Approved by the board on 22 November 2007. And signed on their behalf by: Peter Obi, Director." Peter Obi had by then been governor of Anambra State for twenty months, counted from the day he first took office on 17 March 2006. Vero Record downloaded that filing, and every other document the UK register holds for company number 03199858, from the free public service at find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk. That is 73 filings from 2000 to 2021, and we read them.

It matters because of what Obi, now the Nigeria Democratic Congress candidate for president and entry 13 on INEC's final list, has said about this company. In October 2021 Premium Times reported, in a Pandora Papers investigation later republished by The ICIR, that Obi told the paper he "resigned immediately" by handing his wife a resignation letter when he became governor. According to that report, he suggested the company may have been slow to record his exit, or that Companies House did not document it at once. In January 2023 the head of the Obi-Datti media office, Diran Onifade, said in a statement reported by TheCable: "At the time Peter Obi became governor of Anambra State in 2006, his wife assumed management of the winding down of the company." He added that Obi "has consistently maintained that he is no longer involved in any Next-related business." Both statements are press accounts, graded B.

The filings leave little doubt about whose company this was. The director named in them is "Gregory Peter Onwubuasi Obi", Nigerian, born 19/07/1961, of 14 Oman Avenue, London NW2. Obi's affidavit to INEC for the 2027 election gives the same birth date, 19 July 1961, according to Sahara Reporters. Of the company's 1,000 shares, 999 were held by Next International (Nigeria) Ltd of 98 Modebe Avenue, Onitsha (printed "Omitsha" on the form). The remaining one was held by "Peter Obi" at the same London address. The 2023 campaign statement itself described the firm as the buying office of Next Nigeria, "and Peter Obi was its CEO". The company secretary throughout was Margaret Peter Obi. Obi's wife is Margaret.

Part of this is already public. Premium Times reported in 2021 that the register shows Obi as a director until 16 May 2008, and other outlets have repeated that date many times since. The rest of the file, read in order, bears directly on the explanation Obi gave, and that part has had little attention.

The first document is the annual return made up to 16 May 2006. Companies House received it on 3 July 2006, three and a half months after Obi first took office, and it was authorised by the company secretary. It lists one director only: Gregory Peter Onwubuasi Obi, with his occupation given as "Overseas Co Representative". No second director was appointed until 21 August 2006, when Josephat Ndibe Obi, born in May 1968, joined the board. The filings do not say how he is related to the candidate. Section 282(3) of the UK Companies Act 1985, which Vero Record read on legislation.gov.uk, provided that "Every private company shall have at least one director." This next point is our own reading, graded C. If Obi had resigned in March 2006, the company would have had no director at all for about five months, and yet in July 2006 it told the registrar that he was its only one.

The second document is a change-of-particulars form (288c), received on 20 June 2007. It updates the London postcode recorded for the director Gregory Peter Onwubuasi Obi, with a date of change of 16 May 2007. The annual return filed the same day lists him and Josephat Ndibe Obi as directors. Six days earlier, on 14 June 2007, the Supreme Court had ruled in Obi's favour in SC123/2007, Peter Obi v. INEC and others. That ruling returned him to the governor's office, which he had left on 29 May 2007.

The third document is the one quoted at the top: the abbreviated accounts for 2006, approved on 22 November 2007. Two directors were on the register at that date. The filing names Obi as the one who signed for the board. The accounts were "delivered using electronic communications and authenticated in accordance with section 707B(2) of the Companies Act 1985", so the name is typed, not a handwritten signature. The record does not show who keyed or submitted the filing, or whether Obi personally saw or approved it. It does show that, twenty months into his governorship, the company told the UK registrar in its statutory accounts that Peter Obi had signed them as a director. In our reading, graded C, that is harder to square with a register that was simply slow to record a departure than an outdated officer list would be. That is the gap between the documents and the explanation Obi gave in 2021.

The resignation itself appears in a form 288b received on 16 June 2008. It gives a resignation date of 16 May 2008, which is the company's annual return date, and the 2008 return lists Josephat Ndibe Obi as the sole director. From 17 March 2006 to 16 May 2008 is 791 days, or 26 calendar months. The figure of "14 months" that has been printed since 2021 does not fit those dates. By our own arithmetic, graded C, Obi was out of office for part of that period: after his impeachment on 2 November 2006 until his reinstatement on 9 February 2007, and from 29 May to 14 June 2007. Deduct both gaps and he still held office for 676 of those days, about 22 months.

The company's accounts do not fit the campaign's account of a wind-down beginning in 2006. Total current assets were £2,076,284 at the end of 2005 and £5,069,349 at the end of 2006. They reached £8,902,149 at the end of 2007, £11,104,995 at the end of 2008 and £10,442,597 at the end of 2009, before falling to £33,176 at the end of 2010. Amounts owed to creditors followed the same path: £2,048,641, then £5,040,077, £8,871,503, £11,073,962 and £10,411,377, before dropping to £1,831. Cash at bank stood at £5,334,136 at the end of 2008. Across the first three years of Obi's governorship the balance sheet grew more than fivefold. It shrank to almost nothing only during 2010, the year Obi began his second term. We re-added each balance sheet against its own totals, and every one adds up.

The notes to the accounts add a little detail. At the end of 2006 the creditors were bank loans of £1,083,463, trade creditors of £477, "other creditors" of £3,954,624 (up from £40,583 a year earlier) and tax of £1,513. Those four items add up to the £5,040,077 total. At the end of 2007, £8,871,347 was owed to the company in debts due after more than a year. Of that, £243,297 was owed by "Next Investments Ltd" and £8,628,050 by "other debtors" who are not named. The 2007 notes also list "one Associated Company - Global Trading & Marketing Limited". Small-company abbreviated accounts do not have to disclose turnover or name counterparties, and these do not. The filings cannot tell us what the company bought or sold, for whom, or where the money came from or went.

Obi's name also stayed on the share register. Every shareholder list the company filed from 2006 to 2016, eleven annual returns in all, records "PETER OBI" as holding one ordinary share. Vero Record read each one. The last full list, made up to 16 May 2016, still shows him. No later filing records a transfer, although the confirmation statements filed after 2016 did not have to repeat the list. From 28 February 2018 the register names Margaret Peter Obi as the person with significant control, with the right to appoint or remove a majority of the board. The company was dissolved by compulsory strike-off on 7 September 2021. One share out of 1,000 is 0.1 per cent. The campaign's line that the firm was 99 per cent owned by Next Nigeria is accurate as far as it goes, since the Nigerian company held 99.9 per cent. The remaining share stood in Obi's own name for the whole of his eight years as governor and for two years after. Holding a share is not the same as managing a company.

The rule that applies is in Nigerian law. Section 6(b) of the Code of Conduct Bureau and Tribunal Act, in the copy published by the Code of Conduct Tribunal, says a public officer shall not, "except where he is not employed on full-time basis, engage or participate in the management or running of any private business, profession or trade". The Fifth Schedule to the Constitution contains a matching rule. A governor is a full-time public officer. Whether being named as director, and as the signatory of a company's accounts, amounts to participating in its management is a question of law and fact for the Code of Conduct Tribunal. It is not a question for a newsroom. Vero Record is not aware of any charge against Obi over this company, and no tribunal or court has found that he broke the Code. The documents are evidence that such a body could weigh. They are not a finding.

Some things the record cannot settle. The resignation letter Obi described in 2021 has not been published, as far as we could find. His asset declarations to the Code of Conduct Bureau are not public, so we cannot say whether the directorship or the share was declared. The filings do not show who ran the company's UK bank account or who ran its trade between 2006 and 2010. They also do not explain the jump in 'other creditors' in 2006. The only accounts from Obi's side that we found are his 2021 reply to Premium Times and his campaign's January 2023 statement.

Vero Record has not put these questions to Mr Obi or the NDC campaign before publication. We set them out here and will publish any reply in full. Did Mr Obi approve the 2006 accounts that were filed in his name on 22 November 2007? Will he publish the resignation letter he says he gave his wife in 2006? If the company was being wound down from 2006, why did its balance sheet grow to £11.1m by the end of 2008? Was his directorship, or his share, in Next International (UK) Limited declared to the Code of Conduct Bureau when he took office in 2006 and again in 2010?

Every document cited here is free to open. Search for company number 03199858 on the Companies House service, open the filing history, and choose the accounts filed on 22 November 2007, the annual return filed on 4 July 2006 and the resignation form filed on 16 June 2008. Vero Record applies the same test to every candidate in this election: what the candidate says, set against what the paperwork says.

What this rests on

Companies House filings for Next International (UK) Limited (03199858), downloaded and read in full: annual returns 2006 to 2016, the 288c of June 2007, the 288b of June 2008, abbreviated accounts for 2005 to 2019, the 2018 PSC notice and the 2021 dissolution notice. Also the Code of Conduct Bureau and Tribunal Act as published by the Code of Conduct Tribunal, and section 282 of the UK Companies Act 1985 from legislation.gov.uk. Obi's own explanation (Premium Times/ICIR, October 2021) and his campaign's (TheCable, January 2023) are press accounts. The tenure-day arithmetic, the reading of the five months with a sole director and the reading of the signed accounts are Vero Record's own and are labelled C.

What this does not establish

The filings do not establish that Obi personally approved, signed or submitted the electronically filed 2006 accounts that carry his typed name, or that he took part in running the company while governor. No tribunal or court has found a breach of the Code of Conduct, and we know of no charge. The record does not show whether the directorship or the share was declared to the Code of Conduct Bureau, what trade the company carried on, who its debtors and creditors were, who ran its bank account, whether a 2006 resignation letter exists, or how Josephat Ndibe Obi is related to the candidate. No shareholder transfer is recorded after 2016, but the later confirmation statements did not have to repeat the shareholder list.