Yemi Obafemi
Labour Party’s 2023 presidential candidate, Peter Obi, has attributed Nigeria’s developmental decline to decades of incompetent political leadership, stressing that visionary governance is the missing link in the country’s progress.
Speaking at Johns Hopkins University in the United States, Obi compared Nigeria’s economic and social trajectory with that of China, Vietnam, and Indonesia, noting how those nations surged ahead while Nigeria fell behind.
His words:”In 1990, the year the measurement of the Human Development Index (HDI) was started, these 3 comparable nations, including Nigeria, were all classified under the medium category of the HDI measurement. 35 years later, 3 of these 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 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 ($5000) and Vietnam’s (4400) GDP per capita and below one-tenth of China’s (1300) GDP per capita.
“In the area of poverty, Nigeria with about 50 million poor people, had the least number of people in poverty in 1990 than any of the three countries. While China had about 750 million people living in poverty, Indonesia and Vietnam had 85 million and 60 million poor people, respectively. China alone had about 15 times the number of poor people than Nigeria. Today, however, Nigeria has more poor people than these 3 countries combined.
“The question then is, what exactly did these countries do to be able to achieve the desired growth and development? That is where political leadership comes in. These comparable nations, and indeed other progressive nations, unlike Nigeria, have competent leadership with character, capacity and compassion, committed to prioritizing investment in critical areas of developmental measures; Education, Health, and pulling people out of poverty.”
