Lessons Nigeria can learn from Lee Kuan Yew

I happened to be sitting in front of the television in the two hours following the official announcement by the Singaporean Prime Minister’s office of the passing of Lee Kuan Yew, widely revered as the founding father of Singapore. Despite the time difference, leaders from all over the globe were outdoing one another with statements of profound admiration of and respect for the late Prime Minister. There was no let up over the next several days as governments expressed condolences and announced their intention to send high powered delegations to grace the funeral held on Sunday. All these admirers could NOT be wrong, including China whose late leader Deng Xiaoping had consulted with Yew in the run-up to its great opening to the outside world. Even President Barak Obama, as brilliant as they come, has publicly acknowledged the premium he placed on the advice he received from Yew.

A couple of years ago, I came back from a brief absence from Nigeria to meet a raging positive controversy. The news headline was that a certain book, FROM THIRD WORLD TO FIRST, authored by Lee Kuan Yew, was going to redeem Nigeria. From the reports, I gleaned that the Presidency had just declared the book, which had been available for quite a while, required reading for the heads of all Ministries, Departments and Agencies. I was highly scandalised because I had assumed, it now appeared wrongly, that the typical minister, or permanent secretary must surely have read that book. There has been more than enough prompting over time from the voracious literati in our midst who routinely make several executive summaries available to those of us less endowed or plain lazy. People like Prof Pat Utomi immediately come to mind. Left to my own devices, I may never have come across writings such as Francis Fukuyama’s. As for Yew’s From Third World To First, Utomi and many others had dutifully made a song and dance of it. Only the deaf and blind could claim not to have noticed.

That was exactly why I was embarrassed since I couldn’t imagine that a serving minister or permanent secretary would need his boss to REQUIRE him to read Yew’s book. What exactly did they then read outside recommended texts while at Harvard, Stanford, Wharton and Insead, etc? Is it that they completely stopped reading once they returned to Nigeria with their higher degrees?

The truth is that what made Lee Kuan Yew to stand out were his intellect and tenacity girded by uncompromising ethical standards of meritocracy and a brutal stance against corruption of all kinds. For a tiny country lacking every single natural resource, including land and fresh water, Yew recognised very early that the one thing Singapore had was its people. Hence, all that Yew and his successors achieved in the past five decades can be summarised thus: He developed and properly harnessed the human resources of Singapore, turning everything that they touched into gold. How many Nigerians are aware that Singapore was actually expelled from the Malaysian Federation almost immediately after independence from British colonial rule, at about the same time as us? This happened because Singapore looked like a basket case and was the very poor cousin in that federation. And here we have busied ourselves with the interminable squabble over oil-derived revenue.

Everybody, including advanced western economies, have over the past two decades expressed immense amazement at the success of the Singaporean model and the tenacity with which it has been pursued.

Other commentators, in reporting the passing of Yew, have drawn attention to some lessons that Nigeria can and should take from his methods and achievements. One writer has pointed out that “a notable lesson for Nigeria is Lee’s tendency towards home-grown solutions as against imported ideas.”

I must at this point recall a statement made at a forum by my friend, Ajulu Uzodike, a renowned Nigerian manufacturer, on manpower issues. He stressed that no foreign country or company sends its best people overseas, no matter what. This writer has had the experience of being asked routinely by government outfits and other companies in Nigeria, “Who are your technical partners?” My stock answers typically ruffled feathers, a development that I enjoyed so much. I could stress that if we had any knowledge gaps based on the complexity of the job at hand, we would know well ahead of the client. In addition, if the client was smarter than my organisation, then they should have solved the problems by themselves. Or again, I would remind the client that our erstwhile bosses in London, New York. San Francisco or Tokyo CANNOT come down here to fix the problem. As for our colleagues over there, we were more often than not smarter than them!

That explains why a President Olusegun Obasanjo would go all over the world wooing Nigerians in the Diaspora to come home without realising that a good many of them were already home of their own accord, pleading for challenges commensurate with their training and experience. The best salesmen of Nigeria’s effort to invite home its brightest and best in foreign lands are those who are already here!

The story of how Obasanjo encountered Dr Emmanuel Egbogah, PE, who routinely tells the likes of Schlumberger what to do in difficult circumstances, is truly worthy of a book. I understand that he was recommended to the President independently by both the then Libyan oil minister and the folks at Malaysia’s Petramina. Nigerians at the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation and the Presidency either didn’t know about this world renowned petroleum engineer OR pretended not to know. It is about time Egbogah wrote his own account, in the national interest.

This writer can swear that there is no documentary evidence in Nigerian government records that he actually came back to the country more than three decades ago. If this is true of a Federal Government scholar like me, one wonders about the rest. On this score, Nigeria has so much to learn from Singapore, and also Malaysia, Indonesia, pre-Gulf War Iraq, Iran and Turkey. Other examples abound. These countries keep track of their manpower. It pays.

Out of frustration, many Nigerians readily latch onto what they perceive to be the real reason for Nigeria’s one step forward, two steps backward development trajectory. I have written extensively on our various mis-steps in the power and automobile industries.

Nigerians blame Islam. Really? Nobody seems to remember that Indonesia, which has mostly got its act together, is the largest Muslim country in the world. It also provides a sizable chunk of the direct foreign investment flow into Nigeria.

Next, Nigeria was ruined by long term military rule/dictatorship. Yes, that is true. But the story does not have to end that way. For whatever is wrong with dictatorship, other dictators like Lee Kuan Yew and General Surharto (of Indonesia) had used the period of restricted plural political expression to set their nation on the path of irreversible progress. So, also did the Chinese leadership which was and still is anything but democratic. The problem then has to be strictly Nigerian. General Yakubu Gowon and his many successors, with their limited education and narrow world view, just couldn’t get it. Was he not the one who announced decades ago that money was not our problem, but how to spend it? Our politicians, both military and civilians, had dutifully obliged him. That is partly why we are the way we are.

Nigeria has too many tribes and languages. We are too many. Is that true? How do we compare with India, or China? I was shocked to learn that India had joined our usual source, Thailand, to export rice to Nigeria. Thankfully, the Agriculture  Minister, Akinwunmi Adesina, and his team are currently addressing that issue.

I have endeavoured to use a broad brush to highlight the prodigious output and achievements of this remarkable man Lee Kuan Yew in the service of his people. I can only hope that I have been able to point out that it is not too late for the Nigerian leadership to turn over a new leaf and start with renewed resolve the march to national greatness. It is clear that we have all that it takes. Clearly, I am not referring to oil, gold, tin and columbite.

May Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew rest in perfect peace!