Singapore and Lee-Kuan-Yew

When Leadership is discussed in dispassionate academic and intellectual discourses, names which dominate include Osagyefo Dr Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, Lee Kuan Yew (LKY) of Singapore, Nelson Mandela of South Africa and relative newcomer Paul Kagame of Rwanda, whose leadership may still be “work in progress.”

Perhaps, posterity will be the better judges when Kagame joins the others in the world of ancestors.

All have however been described as leaders who impacted and transformed their countries with the force of their personalities of honesty, integrity and selflessness. My first visit to Singapore was from Cambodia in 1992, when I was serving as a peacekeeper with the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC).

Cambodia was a failed-state whose leader Pol Pot had decimated the country’s population of five million to 3.5 million with unimaginable gruesomeness. The flight from Phnom Penh, Cambodia, to Singapore was a difficult one for me psychologically. Why?

NAF air-crash

On September 26, 1992, a C-130 Hercules aircraft of the Nigerian Air Force (NAF) flying senior officer-students of the Command and Staff College (CSC), Jaji –Kaduna, from Lagos to Kaduna crashed three minutes after take-off. None of the about 200 passengers on board survived.

For me, it was extremely traumatic because, as a student of CSC Jaji myself in the late 1980s, I had undertaken a similar field trip to Lagos and back in C130 aircraft. Worse still, the captain of the ill-fated flight was my friend from our Staff College days, when I spent college breaks with him and his family at the NAF Base, Ikeja, Lagos. A C-130 pilot-instructor himself, he regaled me with stories of his regular trips to Singapore to service NAF’s C-130s.

It was soon after the C130 crash in Nigeria that I boarded another C130 from Phnom Pehn to Singapore. Years later, between 1994-1996, this time as a Directing Staff (lecturer) in Nigeria, I continued to be haunted by the 1992 tragedy as we undertook field trips with students to Lagos/Port Harcourt in C-130s.

Singapore

When we entered Singaporean airspace in 1992, the captain announced that Singapore had stringent laws on discipline, which one flouted at one’s own cost. He added matter-of-factly that since chewing gum was banned in Singapore, anyone who had chewing gum could leave it with the aircrew and collect it on return to Cambodia.

The person who set Singapore on this trajectory of discipline to what it is today is Prime Minister Lee-Kuan-Yew. Both Ghana and the Federation of Malaysia, gained independence from Britain in 1957, Ghana on March 6 and Malaysia on August 31.

Indeed, Ghana became the 55th country to join the United Nations, and Malaysia the 56th as sovereign states. In 1965 however, following irreconcilable differences, Singapore was expelled from the Malaysian Federation.

Forced to start a new independent Singapore, Lee Kuan Yew told Singaporeans: “The world does not owe us a living. We cannot live by the begging bowl.”

He added that they either swam together or drowned. He, however, warned that the latter was not an option under his leadership. He also emphasised, “Human ingenuity is infinite when translating Power and Discretion into personal gain.” Acknowledging corruption as part of humanity, he set out to wage war on it!

Michael Fay

An example of the zero-tolerance for indiscipline in Singapore our C130 captain warned us about is recorded in Lee Kuan Yew’s book “From Third World to First” about an American youth.

In 1994, a 19-year-old American, Michael Fay, was found guilty of vandalism for graffiti-ing vehicles/walls. He was sentenced to six strokes of the cane. US President Clinton spearheaded a campaign including appealing to the Pope to stop the caning.

Out of respect for the Pope and Clinton, Lee Kuan Yew reduced the sentence from six strokes to four strokes of the cane, which was immediately administered. TIME Magazine of March 24, 2014 described Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew as “an incredibly brilliant man of great intelligence with no patience for mediocrity.”

Lessons

Right from the airport, I found Singapore an incredibly neat little country. Psychologists state that human beings are not predisposed to loving to do the right thing.

For most, it is the fear of punishment which makes us do the right thing, thus obeying the law. Indeed, my taxi driver described Singapore as: “a fine country….! You chew gum, fine….! You spit, fine….! You litter, fine…!, You cross red-light, fine…! Everything, fine, fine, fine…!”

Ghana’s recent low hygiene ranking in the world is embarrassing! On a visit to Korle-Bu during the week, seeing the filth in the general area of the Korle-Lagoon as it enters the sea, I bowed my head in shame as a Ghanaian.

As for speeding and reckless driving, the least said about it, the better! No wonder the public uproar against the withdrawn LI giving big men/women the licence to speed without limit while lesser mortals are cleared off the road with jingle -bells and sirens as happened to a WO1 in uniform at Ashaiman, and as I suffered once. Meanwhile, motorbike riders ride about confidently without helmets, in the full glare of law-enforcement officers.

On corruption, one of Lee Kuan Yew’s closest friends committed suicide rather than face the shame of a corruption trial against him in court! Bob Marley said, “The greatness of a man is not how much wealth he acquires, but in his integrity and his ability to affect those around him positively!”

Afternoon

As the American essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson stated, “What you are, shouts so loudly in my ears, I cannot hear what you say about yourself!”

Enimil Ashon recently wrote in the Daily Graphic, “A word to the wise is in Kenya!”

To obviate that, lessons must be learnt from leaders like Lee-Kuan-Yew, Osagyefo Dr Kwame Nkrumah and the relative newcomer who may be described as “work in progress,” whose force of personality, of honesty, integrity and selflessness on their countries have immortalised them.

Leadership, lead by example! Fellow Ghanaians, wake up!

The writer is former CEO of African Peace Support Trainers Association, Nairobi, Kenya/Council Chair Family Health University College, Accra. E-mail: [email protected]