‘I was not optimistic about Africa. In less than 10 years after independence, Nigeria had had a coup and Ghana, a failed coup. I thought their tribal loyalties were stronger than their sense of common nationhood. This was especially so in Nigeria, where there was a deep cleavage between the Muslim Hausa Northerners and the Christian and pagan Southerners.
In Ghana, without this North-South divide, the problem was less acute, but there were still clear tribal divisions. Unlike India, Ghana did not have long years of training and tutelage in the methods and disciplines of modern government’ – Lee Kuan Yew, the pioneer Prime Minister of Singapore. On Wednesday, June 12, 2024, Nigerians in what has become a ritual of the sort celebrated her 25th Democracy in the country, signaling 25 years of uninterrupted practice of democracy.
While some celebrated the national unity and continued practice of democracy in the country as a form of government against all permutations of disintegration, other Nigerians who are higher in number recalled with nostalgia the good old days in the history of Nigeria.
‘Those days when Nigerians loved to stay alive were never a burden as it is today. The cost of living was comparatively low and national security was never a problem. Our value system was sound, integrity and good name mattered much. People had value for hard work and honesty. In those good old days, corruption was never an institution as we now experience in contemporary Nigeria and the society then frowned at unexplained sources of wealth of individuals. In those good old days, people did not lose their consciences as it is the case now. Those good old days, they lament, have gone for good’.
As we celebrate, it is, however, important that to move this nation forward socio-economically and bring these form of lamentation among Nigerians to an end in subsequent celebrations, there are reasons for Nigeria as a nation particularly, our public office holders in country to draw public leadership from Singapore as Nigeria has a lot of lessons to learn from that country-particularly in the areas: economy, infrastructure, job creation, electoral practices and fight against corruption as scripted by Senior Minister Lee Kuan Yew, the pioneer prime minister of Singapore.
Adding context to this discourse, Lee was a leader that understood clearly that public order, personal and national security, economic and social programmes, and prosperity do not represent the natural order of things but depend on the ceaseless efforts and attentions from an honest and effective government that the people elect and recognizes; that it takes a prolonged effort to administer a country well and change the backward habits of the people.
Separate from the fact that Singapore as a country had in the past met with the same challenges Nigeria currently battles with, learning how they tackled and succeeded would be an important lesson for the nation at this critical moment. In fact, anyone who wants to grow in leadership must almost always be open to learning.
As we celebrate, Nigerians must be molded by new experiences in order to improve their leadership skill. Like Singapore, we must as a nation come to the recognition that leaders who scale do so regardless of background, skill and talent. Rather, they scale because they take deliberate steps to confront their shortcomings and become the leaders their society or nation need them to be.
‘Instead of floundering, they learn to fly”.
Beginning with effective resource management, Singapore, under Lee’s administration, was a country with a GDP of $3billion in 1965 which grew to $46billion in 1997, making it the eighth highest per capita GNP in the world, according to the World Bank.
Essentially, its progress is a reflection of the advances of the industrial countries-their inventions, technology, enterprise and drive, a united and a determined group of leaders, backed by practical and hard-working people who trust them. It is part of the story of a leader’s search for new fields to increase the wealth and wellbeing of his people.
According to Lee, the country had no natural resources for MNCs to exploit. All it had were hard-working people, good basic infrastructure and a government that was determined to be honest and competent. Our duty was to create livelihood for two million Singaporeans. The second part was to create a First World oasis in a Third World region. This was something Israel could not do because it was at war with its neighbours.”
If Singapore could establish first world standards in public and personal security, health, education, telecommunications, transportation and services, it would become a base camp for entrepreneurs, engineers, managers and other professionals who had business to do in the region.
This meant we had to train our people and equip them to provide First World standards of service. I believed this was possible; that we could reeducate and orientate our people with the help of schools, trade unions, community centres and social organisations. If the communists in China could eradicate all flies and sparrows, surely we could get our people to change their Third World habits’.
Fundamentally, the crux of this piece is to use Singapore’s experience under Prime Minister Lee Kwan Yew to analyse and understand the essential ingredients of foresight in leadership and draw a lesson on how leadership decision- making process involves judgment about uncertain elements, and differs from the pure mathematical probability process.
Another profound lesson was Lee’s explanation that after grappling with the problems of unemployment in the country, he came to the recognition that the only way to survive was to industrialize. Add just immediately, he concentrated on getting factories started. ‘Despite their small domestic market of two million, he protected locally assembled cars, refrigerator, air conditioners, radios, television sets, and tape-recorder, in the hope that they would later be partly manufactured locally.
There is certainly an ingrained lesson for Nigeria to draw from this second position. Considering the slow growing economy but scary unemployment levels in the country, the current administration in my opinion will continue to find itself faced with difficulty accelerating the economic life cycle of the nation until they contemplate industrialization, or productive collaboration with private organizations that have surplus capital to create employment.
On the fight against corruption, he had this to say: “we made sure from the day we took office that every dollar in revenue would be properly accounted for and would reach the beneficiaries at the grass root as one dollar, without being siphoned off along the way. So from the very beginning we gave special attention to the areas where discretionary powers had been exploited for personal gains and sharpened the instruments that could prevent, detect or deter such practices.
“We decided to concentrate on the big takers in the higher echelons and directed the CPIB on our priorities. But for the small fish, we set out to simplify procedures and remove discretion by having clear published guidelines, even doing away with the needs for permits and approvals in less important areas. As we ran into problems in securing convictions in prosecutions, we tightened the laws in stages.” Brief and Simple!
To win, he advised that nations must recognize that ‘a precondition for an honest government is that a candidate must not need large sums to get elected, or it must trigger off the circle of corruption. Having spent a lot of money to get elected, winners must recover their costs and possibly accumulate funds for the next election as the system is self-perpetuating”.
For me, applying these principles in the day to day administration of the nation will be more rewarding than the cosmetic Democracy Day celebration. For one thing, it will definitely end the lamentation about ‘good old days’ which presently rends Nigeria’s socio economic wavelength.
Utomi is the programme coordinator, media and policy, Social and Economic Justice Advocacy (SEJA), Lagos