The research focuses on the nature of psychological resilience as a factor that will leads to good youth leadership in Nigeria, with the help of Resilience Theory. Nigeria is home to over 60 percent individuals younger than 25 years of age and thus the potential for change by young people is huge. Nevertheless, challenges that emanate from leadership affect young leaders whereby they lack political stability and willingness to go through economic challenges, and society even complicates leadership. This research employs descriptive research design and has adopted the technique of convenience sampling to sample 100 youth leaders in educational institutions in Nigeria. The study data were gathered using standard questionnaires namely the Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale (CD-RISC) and the Youth Leadership Life Skills Development Scale both yielding high reliability (Cronbach's alpha = 0.78 and 0.744, respectively). The paper analyses personal competence, emotional regulation, and adaptability as factors influencing the status of leadership, as well identify the role of demographic factors as moderators, including age, gender, and educational level. All hypotheses were tested using Multiple regression at a 0.05 significance level. These findings portray a positive and significant association of individual subscales of psychological resilience with leadership effectiveness, especially personal competence (β = 0.268, p < 0.05), emotional regulation (β = 0.423, p < 0.01), and adaptability (β = 0.297, p < 0.05) that have significant potential to raise the young leaders’ levels. On the other hand, demographic factors were found not to have played a role in this relationship which suggests that effectiveness of leadership is not influenced by psychological resilience regardless of demographic factors. It is suggested the area of resilience should be incorporated into youth leadership programmes centred on emotional regulation, personal competencies, flexibility. For example, through Education, Mentoring programmes and Peer support structures. Development of these skills will enable young Nigerian leaders to manage Socio-political issues within the society proactively to champion sustainable leadership.
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