Nigeria’s opposition figure, Peter Obi, has again bemoaned the existential challenges bedevilling the country, saying its leaders are incompetent and lack the character and capacity to govern well.

Mr Obi, while delivering a speech at Johns Hopkins University, U.S., on Thursday, compared Nigeria with other countries in terms of the Human Development Index (HDI).

He emphasised that countries like China, Indonesia, and Vietnam progressed because they had capable leaders.

“The failure of a nation depends largely on its political leadership,” the politician said. “China, Vietnam and Indonesia, and indeed other progressive nations, unlike Nigeria, have competent leadership with character, capacity, and compassion, committed to prioritising investment in critical areas of developmental measures: Education, Health, and pulling people out of poverty.”

The former Anambra governor, who lamented Nigeria’s high poverty rate, insisted that this resulted from the incompetence of leaders and their lack of integrity and compassion, which hindered sustainable growth.

“These three nations have moved up to the high category of HDI, while Nigeria has fallen into the low category. Within the same period of 35 years, from 1990 to 2025, the GDP per capita of these comparable nations have all improved.

“As of 1990, while Nigeria had a GDP per capita of $556, China had $317, Indonesia had $578, and Vietnam had only $99. Nigeria obviously had a higher GDP per capita than China, while Vietnam had less than one-fifth of Nigeria’s per capita.

“Today, Nigeria’s per capita is about one-fifth of Indonesia’s ($5,000) and Vietnam’s ($4,400) GDP per capita and below one-tenth of China’s ($1,300) GDP per capita,” he noted.

Mr Obi’s latest observation coincided with the World Bank’s April 2025 Africa’s Pulse report, which projected a 3.6 per cent increase in poverty in Nigeria by 2027, when President Bola Tinubu is expected to complete his first tenure.

The World Bank noted its projection “follows a well-established pattern, whereby resource wealth combined with fragility or conflict is associated with the highest poverty rates—an average poverty rate of 46 per cent in 2024, 13 percentage points above non-fragile, resource-rich countries.”

According to Mr Obi, Nigeria’s economic growth began to decelerate rapidly from the nineties to date, with poverty engulfing the country more than ever under Mr Tinubu’s administration.

Since 1999, Nigeria has had uninterrupted democratic rule, starting with former President Olusegun Obasanjo, followed by Umar Musa Yar’Adua, Goodluck Jonathan, Muhammadu Buhari, and Mr Tinubu.

The former Anambra governor had first attempted a shot at national leadership by running as a vice presidential candidate to the Peoples Democratic Party’s flagbearer, Atiku Abubakar, before he ran and contested the presidency in 2023 on the platform of the Labour Party, and came third on the ballot.