Maize (Zea mays L.), third most important cereal crop in the world, whose productivity can be limited partly by an important foliar turcicum disease caused by Exserohilum turcicum. In order to design efficient breeding programmes for resistance to leaf blight, the germplasm must be thoroughly characterized. This study evaluated the diversity of maize inbred lines using 26 simple sequence repeat (SSR) primers. The polymorphism information content (PIC) value of the SSR loci ranged from 0.61 to 0.71, with an overall mean of 0.65. It was highest for the primer bnlg1335 (0.71) and lowest for the primer bnlg1666 (0.61). The markers produced one to four alleles, with an average of 2.5 alleles per marker. Using the DARwin 6.0 programme, the inbred lines were grouped into different clusters. The cluster A was solitary, with the inbred line VL171488-2 having a resistant reaction against leaf blight. This line can be used in crossing programmes with divergent parents to develop leaf blight resistant hybrids. The results of this study can be used to design efficient breeding programmes for resistance to leaf blight.