Making Nigeria work the Singaporean way

Making Nigeria work the Singaporean way

Singapore is the smallest of Asia’s four “Little Dragons” but in many ways it is the most successful. Singapore is Asia’s dream country. Singapore’s success says a great deal about how a country with virtually no natural resources can create economic advantages with influence far beyond its region. But it certainly is an example of an extraordinarily successful small country in a big world.

As a Nigerian I have looked deep and I realized our prosperity lies not in our natural resources but the effectiveness of our human resources.

The noted philosopher George Santayana penned one of the great truths about human history: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”A more cynical version written by the German philosopher Friedrich Hegel: “The only thing we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history.” 

I believe it will pay a great deal if we learn from Singapore’s success story, what drew them this far, and how can we as a nation move ahead with their success secrets. I will like to analyze the “Big secrets of Singapore success” and how we can implement them in Nigeria.

Technocratic and Pragmatic leadership

• Meritocracy: Wikipedia defines meritocracy as a political system in which economic goods and/or political power are vested in individual people on the basis of talent, effort, and achievement, rather than factors such as heredity or wealth. Advancement in such a system is based on performance as measured through examination or demonstrated achievement.

As a Nigerian, I have seen where the best minds are sidelined from qualified positions both in public and private sectors because of nepotism, greed and the inability to secure favor from the pillars of power. We need a system in our nation that strongly accommodates competencies, capabilities above the former.

Goh, C.T in “My urgent mission” wrote that meritocracy was the key to Singapore’s success because the “practice of meritocracy in the civil service, in politics, in business and in schools” enabled Singaporeans “to achieve excellence and to compete against others”.

Lee Kuan Yew in his memoirs emphasized the importance of good leadership when he wrote: My experience of developments in Asia has led me to conclude that we need good men to have good government. However good the system of government, bad leaders will bring harm to their people. The single decisive factor that made for Singapore’s development was the ability of its ministers and the high quality of the civil servants who supported them.

Implementation of sound economic policies : we need a sound economic team to ouster robust economic growth

Lee kuan yew described himself as “pragmatic” because he was “prepared to look at the problem and say, all right, what is the best way to solve it that will produce the maximum happiness and well-being for the maximum number of people”

I do not work on a theory says Lee Kuan Yew. Instead I ask: what will make this work? If, after a series of such solutions, I find that a certain approach worked, then I try to find out what was the principle behind the solution. What is my guiding principle? Presented with the difficulty or major problem or an assessment of conflicting facts, I review what alternatives I have if my proposed solution doesn’t work. I choose a solution which offers a higher probability of success, but if it fails, I have some other way. Never a dead end.

A good piano playing good music: an effective public bureaucracy

Sir Kenneth Stowe, a former Permanent Secretary of the UK’s Department of Health and Social Security (1981–1987), has described “the efficient and well-tuned public service” as a “good piano” which should not “play bad music” by not “serving ends which are wrong by ministerial design or incompetence”.

The World Bank defines “government effectiveness” as “the quality of public service provision, the quality of the bureaucracy, the competence of civil servants, the independence of the civil service from political pressures, and the credibility of the government’s commitment to policies”

We all know corruption is a username in the lips of every Nigerian, even the unborn child can feel the scourge of corruption from the womb. For our nation to become effective, corruption has to be tied to the tree and kept at bay. We need a strong political will to curb corruption in all the arms of our government. Our nation Nigeria is sickened by corruption, greed and decadence of our leaders. We need a revolution from strong and willing indigenous minds with a deep sense of mission to establish a clean and effective government with special attention to the areas where discretionary powers had been exploited for personal gain and sharpen the instruments that could prevent, detect or deter such practices.

Our anti-corruption agencies e.g. EFCC, ICPC needs to function effectively by been strengthened with more legal powers, operational autonomy, funding and trainings of its personnel’s to proactively enforce impartial justice to anyone found guilty of a corruption offence and punished regardless of his or her position, status or political affiliation.

Our leader’s need to do more to increase public trust as “corruption influences the level of trust” and a place like Nigeria where corruption is widespread there’s low trust towards our politicians.

Act of Nurturing the “best and brightest” through education and competitive compensation

Education is the key to the long term future of the large and growing population of Nigeria; education is no longer a personal or family investment but a national investment. Investing heavily in education to enhance the skills of young Nigerians and attracting the “best and brightest” to join and remain in the public bureaucracy and government will lead to an upward growth in our economy. Our literacy rate needs to improve.

With the high rate of exodus in the country with highly skilled individuals leaving for greener pastures, government need to make a smart move by matching public sector salaries with the private sector. We all know that doctors working in the private sector earn more than their public sector counterparts. Civil servants need to be paid market rates for their abilities and responsibilities to attract and retain them.

Edgar Schein attributed Singapore’s success to its incorruptible and competent civil service as “having the best and brightest” citizens in government is probably one of Singapore’s major strengths in that they are potentially the most able to invent what the country needs to survive and grow”.

Policy Diffusion: Learning from other countries

In learning from Comparative Public Policy by Rose. R she hinted “The object of looking abroad is not to copy but to learn under what circumstances and to what extent programs effective elsewhere may also work here. Moreover, the failures of other governments offer lessons about what not to do at far less political cost than making the same mistakes yourself”

Instead of inventing the wheel which is unnecessary and expensive we can reach out to other nations, learn from them and solve the frictions in our systems and identify possible solutions for resolving policy problems in Nigeria.

The three steps in the process of “pragmatic acculturation” are: problem identification and sending a team of experts and officials on a fact-finding tour of relevant technical centers and organizations in other countries to learn how the same problems are solved; invitation of internationally renowned experts to Nigeria to give their professional opinions; and formulation of the policy plan from the ideas selected from what has been learned about the problem and tailored to the specific needs of Nigeria. If the ideas and procedures used elsewhere are unsuitable for Nigeria’s needs, then they shouldn’t be adopted.

In final note policy makers Nigeria must realize that there is no “quick fix” or magic bullet for solving our difficulties overnight by simply adopting Singapore-style solutions without considering the political will, preconditions for success and the high political and economic costs of these solutions. When Albert Winsemius retired as Singapore’s Chief Economic Adviser in 1984, he admitted that he did not believe in the Singapore miracle because:

“There was never a Singapore miracle. It was simply hard-headed policy. Because governments which dare to face a situation analyze it and take measures without compromise are rather scarce in this world. If it happened in other countries, it might be a miracle. But what happened in Singapore was not a miracle. It was policy “(quoted in Mukherjee, 2015, pp. 33, 47).

Jo Adoga -- “My analysis from Jon S.T. Quah Article on Why Singapore works: five secrets of Singapore’s success”