By Eketi Edima Ette
You can’t buy or sell chewing gum in Singapore. It’s banned.
As a tourist, if you have it at the airport, Customs will confiscate it. Except for dental and nicotine gum, the sale, import, and manufacture of chewing gum is banned. Break this law and you could face a fine of up to $10,000 or a year in jail.
The ban was set up 32 years ago to stop littering and prevent people from sticking gum to train door sensors, which made them malfunction and caused delays.
Yet, this same Singapore once had a much dirtier problem. Peeing in public was normal. People peed in buses, trains, elevators, stairways. That is, until Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew decided to turn Singapore from a 3rd world country into a 1st world country.
He said the hardest part wasn’t building infrastructure – it was getting citizens who were used to acting like 3rd World people, to start behaving like 1st world people.
There were monthly campaigns on radio and TV telling people to stop spitting and urinating in public spaces. Some obeyed. Others didn’t. The die-hards still peed in elevators. So, electronic devices were installed that stopped the lift when someone peed inside. The police would come and arrest them.
What did some people do? They opened the lift doors, stood outside, and peed into the lift. Cameras had to be installed outside to catch them.
Imagine that kind of stubbornness. Even when public toilets were available. Even with the risk of arrest. That’s not just bad behaviour. It’s a mindset problem.
I saw the same thing in Nigeria during Donald Duke’s time as governor of Cross River State.
He was the first governor, I think, to insist that bike riders and passengers wear helmets. Bike owners had to pay a ₦13,000 registration fee, which covered two helmets and a reflective jacket. To make it affordable, it could be paid in instalments over six months.
The bikers protested. They said it was too sudden. They asked for a three-month extension. The government agreed. Truth is, they didn’t really want to pay. They thought the government would abandon the project. But when the time came, enforcement began.
Riots broke out in parts of Calabar. Tyres were burnt in the streets. A police station was set on fire.
Their reasons? Helmets were “uncomfortable.” Women asked how they could wear them over elaborate headscarves. Others feared catching head lice from sharing helmets.
Still, the government didn’t back down. Soon, deaths and life long issues from head injuries dropped sharply. People began to testify about accidents where their helmets saved their lives.
Same thing happened with the street sweepers. For years, people lived in filth, tossing trash from car windows or dropping it as they walked. When Duke set up the job of street sweepers, at first, they grumbled.
People will fight progress, until they start bragging about it. Because within two years, Calabarians began to take pride in their city. You could tell the strangers and vagabonds—they were the ones littering. And they’d get warnings or verbal dress-downs. Sometimes, locals would pick up the trash and throw it back into the offender’s car with a, “We don’t do that here.”
Yet, the resistance didn’t stop there. When Duke started planting flowers and creating park-like spaces, some claimed—with a straight face and their full chests—that because he was in the Grail Message Movement, he was “doing something spiritual” with the flowers. Probably summoning spirits.
But later, those same people bragged about the city’s beauty.
They said he was wasting money on the Calabar Carnival. Until they enjoyed it.
They complained about noisy churches in residential areas, but called him anti-God when he demanded that places of worship be soundproofed or moved.
See eh, the work we need to do in our country is long and hard. Because our citizens have entrenched and celebrate obstinacy and mediocrity. I’ve seen an older gentleman shouted at by people and slapped by a pedestrian on the street in Abuja because he refused to step aside on the sidewalk, so a taxi could drive on it. I’ve seen grown men and women pee and defecate by the side and in the middle of the roads in our major cities.
But change is doable.
Building infrastructure is easy. Changing mindsets is where the real work lies. Good policies will face resistance, even from those they’ll benefit. In fact, the loudest critics often become the proudest beneficiaries.
Laws must be explained and enforced. People comply faster when they understand why. If people understand why they need to turn off their phones during airplane take-offs and landings, we’ll avoid the kind of brouhaha we had a few days ago.
To achieve long-term benefits, we need consistency. The kind that ignores protests. Because if you back down at the first riot, progress will die. We need successors of good governors to continue doing the right thing or else, the people will revert to old ways.
Now, I feel like shouting this one:
CULTURE CAN CHANGE!
Calabar went from littering to being known as the cleanest city in Nigeria. Singapore went from peeing in lifts to spotless streets. All because those leaders showed citizens that public safety and peace trumps personal inconvenience.
Lastly, *a leader can set the pace, but a country only changes when its people change*. Otherwise, you end up with a world-class lifts…and citizens determined to pee in them.
