Mr President - Welcome home from Japan and Singapore!
In August 2025, the President visited Japan and Singapore.
When leadership is discussed dispassionately in academic/intellectual discourses, names which dominate include Osagyefo Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, Lee-Kuan-Yew (LKY) of Singapore, Mahathir Mohammad of Malaysia and relative newcomer Paul Kagame of Rwanda whose leadership may still be “work in progress.”
All have been described as transformational-leaders who impacted/transformed their countries with the force of their personalities of vision, honesty, integrity and selflessness.
In my article “Singapore and Lee Kuan Yew” of July 2024, I stated as follows:
QUOTE
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 5 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 26 September 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 the 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. An ace 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 Jaji, 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 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 or drowned together. He ,however, warned that drowning was not an option under his leadership. Acknowledging corruption as part of humanity, he set out to wage war on it!
An example of the zero-tolerance for indiscipline in Singapore our C130 captain warned us about is recorded in LKY’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, LKY 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 LKY 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 license 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, motor-bike (okada) riders ride about confidently/carelessly without helmets, in the full glare of law-enforcement officers.
On corruption, one of LKY’s closest friends committed suicide rather than face the shame of 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!” 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!” Hypocrisy in leadership is easily seen through.
Lessons must thus be learnt from leaders like Lee-Kuan-Yew, Osagyefo Kwame Nkrumah, Mahathir Mohammad and Paul Kagame.
Their force of personality of vision, honesty, integrity, meritocracy and selflessness on their countries has immortalised them, epitomising the saying that, respect is earned, not demanded/begged for.
UNQUOTE
Discussion
During the President’s visit, Japan-International-Cooperation-Agency (JICA) at the Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD 9) designated four Japanese cities as “hometowns” for residents of four African countries; Ghana (Sanjo), Nigeria (Kisarazu), Tanzania (Nagai) and Mozambique (Imabari). What does this mean and what are the benefits to Ghana and the other three countries?
Whatever lessons were learnt directly/indirectly in Japan and Singapore, one hopes they include road traffic/general discipline, obeying the law, environmental protection/anti-galamsey, neatness/hygiene, mutual respect and non-tolerance of corruption.
Concurrently, greed, intemperate/disrespectful language and arrogance must be eschewed.
Perhaps, Lee-Kuan-Yew’s famous 1965 statement to fellow Singaporeans; “The world does not owe us a living. We cannot live by the begging bowl,” is what Ghanaians leaders must remind themselves of, after 17 IMF appearances.
While Ghana became independent on March 6, 1957 and had a 2024 GDP per capita of $2,405, Malaysia, which became independent on August 31, 1957, had a 2024 GDP per capita of $11,867.
So, what went wrong with us? How did our cedi move from the world’s best-performing currency in quarter-two of 2025, to the worst-performer in quarter-three?
Leadership, lead by Example/Integrity! Fellow Ghanaians, WAKE UP!
The writer is a former CEO, African Peace Support Trainers Association, Nairobi, Kenya and Council Chairman, Family Health University, Accra
Email: dkfrimpong@yahoo.com
