Mr Obi, a candidate of the Labour Party, has been criticised for not releasing his policy plans before campaigns opened two weeks ago, which critics said signalled unpreparedness for office.

But Mr Obi told the BBC that Nigeria was not bereft of ideas or documented policies, rather it had an "institutional weakness and political will to implement good ideas and policies".

Of the three frontrunners that also includes Bola Tinubu of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), only Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has released a document of how he intends to lead Nigeria if elected.

Mr Obi, a two-time governor of Anambra state in south-east Nigeria where there are agitations by groups that want a breakaway Biafra state, said he is a firm believer in Nigeria and that his solution for the different “agitations across the country,” is to have dialogue and reach a consensus.

He said Nigeria’s number-one priority is the issue of insecurity because it has become an existential one “that must be dealt with head-on decisively”.

“If you deal with it [security] today, you deal with inflation because farmers would go back to farms and that would reduce food inflation,” he said.