By Dr Festus Goziem Okubor writing from Ute-Erumu
There is a temptation in difficult seasons to assume that hardship proves that every policy causing discomfort must be wrong. History is less convenient than that. Sometimes governments fail because they persist with bad policies; at other times nations fail because they abandon necessary reforms before those reforms have had time to work.
Singapore offers one of the clearest examples of the second danger.
On 9 August 1965, Singapore did not enter independence with trumpets, champagne and the confidence of a nation certain of greatness. Its separation from Malaysia came after severe political disagreements, racial tension and violence. Indeed, Singapore’s Parliament records that it had joined Malaysia only in 1963 before becoming a separate sovereign state two years later. Lee Kuan Yew, who had strongly believed that merger was necessary for Singapore’s economic survival, famously wept as separation became reality.
Those tears were understandable.
Singapore was tiny. It had virtually no natural resources. It possessed no large domestic market and no hinterland. Unemployment was high, housing conditions were appalling, labour unrest was frequent, racial tensions were fresh, and national defence was fragile. Government accounts recall that nearly 70 per cent of the population had been living in slum conditions around the beginning of self-government and that unemployment remained in double digits around independence. Indonesia’s Konfrontasi added a serious security threat.
Then another blow arrived. Britain announced the withdrawal of its military presence. Singapore estimated that the withdrawal threatened tens of thousands of jobs and would remove spending equivalent to roughly 14 per cent of GDP. For a young country already wondering how it would survive, this was not a headache. It was practically a migraine with drums.
And yet that vulnerable island became modern Singapore.
Lee Kuan Yew’s great achievement was not magic.
There is sometimes a romantic telling of Singapore’s story in which Lee Kuan Yew appears, waves an administrative wand, everybody becomes disciplined and skyscrapers spring from the ground.
That is not what happened.
Lee was extraordinarily consequential, but he worked with an exceptional team that included figures such as Goh Keng Swee and S. Rajaratnam. Their genius was not merely that they took “tough decisions.” Plenty of governments take painful decisions and achieve nothing. Singapore’s distinction was that pain was connected to a coherent destination.
The government industrialised aggressively, courted foreign investment, built infrastructure, expanded education and technical training, developed public housing, strengthened national defence, enforced standards in public administration and made itself fiercely competitive as an export economy. Unable to depend upon a Malaysian common market, Singapore deliberately turned outward to the world.
And Singaporeans paid a price.
Labour relations were restructured. The 1968 Employment Act standardised employment conditions but also curtailed some practices that the government believed made Singapore uncompetitive. Wage growth was subsequently managed through tripartite arrangements linking workers, employers and government, with productivity and national competitiveness constantly in view. These choices were controversial precisely because somebody had to surrender something today for the possibility of gaining much more tomorrow.
The bargain eventually produced results. Singapore’s National Library records average GDP growth of about 13.4 per cent between 1968 and 1972, while unemployment fell sharply.
That is the part of the Singapore miracle we sometimes forget.
Everybody admires the photograph of the finished house. Few people want to remember the cement dust. We Nigerians have developed a slightly more convenient philosophy: “Lord, give us Singapore, but please do not disturb the price of anything between Monday and Friday.” Unfortunately, economics has never been particularly impressed by prayer points of that variety.
Nigeria’s present experiment
President Bola Ahmed Tinubu entered office in 2023 and immediately attacked two deeply entrenched economic arrangements: the petrol subsidy regime and the multiple foreign-exchange system. His government has subsequently pursued tax reform, student financing through NELFUND, compressed-natural-gas programmes, infrastructure programmes and other measures intended to alter the structure of the economy.
The consequences of the opening reforms were severe. Petrol prices rose dramatically. Currency depreciation fed through into imported goods. Food and transport became more expensive. Households whose incomes had already been fragile were squeezed further. That suffering should never be trivialised.
A woman buying garri in Ughelli does not eat “macroeconomic adjustment.” A civil servant travelling from Ibadan to work cannot pay the conductor with “long-term fundamentals.” And when school fees are due, telling a father that foreign reserves are improving is unlikely to produce applause from the children. The human consequences therefore matter as much as the economics.
But compassion does not require us to pretend that the old arrangements were sustainable. Subsidising petrol indefinitely while government revenues bled away, maintaining exchange rates that created arbitrage opportunities, and financing consumption without expanding productive capacity could postpone the day of reckoning; they could not abolish it. The serious question is therefore not simply: “Are Nigerians suffering?” They plainly are.
The more useful question is: “Is today’s suffering financing tomorrow’s correction, or merely financing another round of national waste?” That distinction changes everything.
There are now some encouraging indicators, although they should not be exaggerated. The IMF reported in June 2026 that gross international reserves had risen to about US$46 billion in 2025, from US$40 billion at the end of 2024, while net international reserves rose substantially. It also projected that, despite renewed pressure from international fuel and food prices, disinflation should resume in the second half of 2026. At the same time, the IMF warned about fiscal deficits, weak oil revenues, security challenges and the continuing need for reforms that translate macroeconomic improvement into better living conditions. That combination is important. It means neither “everything has failed” nor “everything is now wonderful.” It means Nigeria is still in transition. But Nigeria is not Singapore.
Here the comparison must be handled carefully. Nigeria cannot simply copy Singapore. Singapore was a compact city-state with a small population. Nigeria is a federation of more than 200 million people, enormous regional disparities, 36 states, thousands of communities, entrenched security problems and vastly greater administrative complexity.
Lee Kuan Yew also governed within a political system far more centralised and restrictive than contemporary Nigerian democracy ought to become. Singapore’s development success should therefore be studied for institutional discipline, planning, competence and continuity, not used as an excuse for authoritarianism, as Obasanjo may have sought. Most importantly, Singapore did not merely ask citizens to sacrifice. The government sacrificed too. It fought corruption, prized administrative competence, planned relentlessly and demanded performance.
That is perhaps the strongest lesson for Nigeria. A government cannot preach austerity from inside extravagance. If citizens are tightening belts, public offices cannot be loosening suspenders.
If Nigerians are asked to endure reform, then expenditure discipline, transparency, visible infrastructure, effective social protection and consequences for corruption become moral obligations, not optional extras. Otherwise somebody will eventually ask the reasonable Nigerian question: “We are all making sacrifices, but why does my own sacrifice always seem to have an address?” That question deserves an answer. Patience must therefore come with a contract.
There is a respectable case for allowing major structural reforms sufficient time to mature. Economies do not respond to surgery the way kettles respond to electricity. Remove a distortion today and prosperity does not whistle tomorrow morning. Investment decisions take time. Factories take time. Infrastructure takes time.
Agricultural production responds across seasons. Tax reforms require implementation. Foreign-exchange markets need credibility.
Productivity follows infrastructure and capital formation only gradually.
Singapore’s transformation itself unfolded over decades, not press conferences. Nigeria should therefore be wary of a political culture in which every difficult year produces a demand to dismantle whatever was begun the year before. Nations cannot develop by permanently excavating yesterday’s foundations to inspect whether the cement has dried. But patience is not a blank cheque. For consolidation to deserve public confidence, Nigerians should reasonably demand five things from any administration pursuing difficult reforms: measurable reduction in inflation and food costs; visible jobs and private investment; improved electricity, transport and security; disciplined government expenditure; and credible evidence that increased public revenues are reaching citizens through states, local governments and infrastructure.
That is the democratic bargain. The government must say: give reform time. Citizens are entitled to reply: Fine. Show us what the time is purchasing.
Singapore’s deepest lesson
The lesson of Lee Kuan Yew is often described as toughness.
I think that description is incomplete. His more important quality was direction. He knew what kind of country he wanted to build and created institutions capable of continuing toward it. Singaporeans endured adjustment because over time they could see houses being built, employment expanding, neighbourhoods changing, infrastructure appearing and national competence becoming tangible. Sacrifice became credible because results began answering the argument.
Nigeria desperately needs that same transition: from politics as perpetual restart to politics as cumulative construction.
Our democracy has sometimes behaved like an impatient mechanic. We change the engine, gearbox and driver simultaneously, then complain that the vehicle has not reached Lagos before leaving Asaba.
There are occasions when change is necessary. There are also occasions when consolidation is change’s indispensable second half. A reform that requires five or seven years to mature cannot be rationally judged as though it were instant noodles. So what should Nigerians do?
Neither worship a government nor sabotage reform merely because reform hurts. Interrogate it. Measure it. Correct it where necessary.
Demand compassion for those carrying the heaviest burden. Insist upon accountability.
But where policy direction is producing credible stabilisation, resist the temptation to destroy the seedlings because the tree has not yet produced shade. Singapore’s founding generation discovered something profound: nations occasionally encounter historical moments when citizens must consume a little less of today in order to manufacture much more of tomorrow. Yet leaders must earn that patience continually.
The strongest case for political continuity in Nigeria, therefore, should not be “Tinubu must remain because Singapore kept Lee.” That analogy would be historically lazy. The stronger proposition is this: Nigeria should judge the present reform programme by whether its underlying direction is sound, which it is, whether measurable indicators continue improving, as they are, whether government itself embraces sacrifice, and whether ordinary Nigerians increasingly experience the benefits. If those tests are met, continuity and consolidation become rational policy considerations rather than matters of political sentiment.
Singapore teaches us that transformation seldom arrives painlessly.
Nigeria should add one lesson of its own: Patience is not surrender. It is an investment, but the government must keep issuing dividends of evidence.
The child who plants a mango seed this afternoon and digs it up tomorrow morning to ask why there are no mangoes is not impatient. He is simply ensuring there will never be a mango tree.
Nigeria has uprooted enough trees!!!
Perhaps the greater wisdom now is to nourish what is working, prune what is not, protect those bearing the heaviest burden, and give serious reforms enough time to show what they can become.
Give Tinubu a second term.
