Segun Sowunmi, a chieftain of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), has criticised the Labour Party’s presidential candidate in the 2023 election, Peter Obi, for allegedly de-marketing Nigeria on the international stage.

Sowunmi’s remarks followed Obi’s latest comments on the country’s poverty rate, which he noted has skyrocketed over the last 35 years due to incompetent leadership.

The famous author of “Growing Apart: Comparing Indonesia and Nigeria,” Professor Peter Lewis, invited the Labour Party leader to speak on “Politics and Change in Nigeria” at Johns Hopkins University in the United States on Thursday, April 24, 2025.

Sharing a summary of his speech at the event on his X on Friday, Obi, who felt honoured by the invitation, said he highlighted how a nation’s failure depends largely on its political leadership.

Ho noted that competent, capable, and compassionate political leadership, with integrity, will help nations to achieve sustainable growth and development.

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Highlighting how Nigeria has failed to alleviate poverty over the last three decades, Obi compared the progress recorded by China, Indonesia, and Vietnam within the same timeframe.

He said the trio were categorised alongside Nigeria when the Human Development Index (HDI) was introduced in 1990.

“35 years later, three of these nations have moved up to the High category of HDI while Nigeria has fallen into the low category,” he wrote.

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“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.”

Sowunmi tackles Obi over the poverty rate

The former Anambra State Governor further claimed that Nigeria, with about 50 million poor people, had the least number of people in poverty in 1990 than any of China, Vietnam, and Indonesia.

However, he said Nigeria today has more poor people than the trio combined, indicating the regressive nature of the country.

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“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.”

He questioned how other countries were able to pull their citizens out of poverty, while Nigeria continued to plunge, attributing the difference to poor political leadership.

“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,” he added.

However, commenting on the post, Sowunmi disagreed with Obi’s submission, which he deemed as an act of de-marketing Nigeria.

He argued that the measurements the former Governor used to arrive at such a conclusion were extremely skewed, as they didn’t take into consideration Nigeria’s thriving informal sector.

He cautioned the Labour Party leader to desist from the trope of portraying a negative image of the country, especially at international forums.

“With due respect @PeterObi these measurements are faulty. Extremely skewed for those who manipulate these figures have no metrics to measure the informal sector in Nigeria. You need to stop this, especially at international forums,” he stated.

Sowunmi tasked Obi to place the burden on those manipulators and their neoliberal policies, which he said put Africa under undue pressure.

“You ought to place the burden on them and their crazy neoliberal policy and its deep state manipulations that put undue pressure on Africa! No one who wishes to lead a nation called Nigeria must be the de-marketer on steroids of the same country he or she wishes to lead. Stop it immediately.

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“Are those you wish to impress outside our country not aware of the multiplier effect of their destabilization of the Sahel and its unfortunate consequences on Nigeria. You need to cut the crap. #NigeriaFirst,” the PDP chieftain added.