According to Oba, his party spent more than one billion CFA francs on its 2007 election campaign. The high level of spending outraged many people, as it was unclear where the money had come from. Oba denied rumors that he had diverted money from SOTELCO to finance his party's campaign; on the same occasion, he said that SOTELCO had not received any subsidies from the state since the end of the 1997 civil war, making it the only one of Congo-Brazzaville's top five companies to have not benefited from a subsidy during that period. He observed that much of the company's technical capacity had been damaged during the war and said that 22 billion CFA francs were needed to repair the telecommunications network in Brazzaville, adding that SOTELCO needed to improve services in order to remain competitive in the context of economic liberalization.