As you read this, two important but unrelated events are happening. Nigerians are going through one of their closest presidential elections ever. Nigeria is currently the most populated African country, the biggest oil producer and also has the biggest economy on the continent. However this is the same country that has suffered with years of instability and grand scale corruption.

Farther away, the rest of the world joins the people of Singapore to bid farewell to the island’s founding father Lee Kuan Yew, the man credited with spearheading Singapore’s 30-year-change from a third world country to a first world global financial centre. His tough approach to development is often a point of reference and envy for many African countries.

We have all heard enduring tales of how soon after independence, several East African countries were at the same level of development with countries like Singapore, Malaysia or South Korea. More than 50 years later and it is obvious we dropped out of that race a long time ago.

The lingering question is what we are doing wrong for us to be left behind to cling on small wins here and there.

We love to brag about our tourism spots that offer the famed African Safari complete with top experiences like the exhilarating experience of viewing mountain gorillas in their natural habit or the annual wildebeest migration.

We also now brag about our oil and gas discoveries as though they are a panacea to all our problems.

The Kenyans will not hesitate to remind you how they invented M-pesa and turned ordinary mobile phones into mobile banks. Once the Tanzanians are done telling you about their political stability and huge natural resource reserves, the Rwandans will remind you of how they have built a nation almost from scratch in 20 years.

All said and done, we all have the potential to pull off a Singapore if we put in the effort but we may just as well end up with smaller versions of a Nigeria. It is no secret that we are where we are because our levels of discipline and skills are nothing to write home about.

You cannot achieve much without basic discipline like simple time keeping. The guy who finds it ok to overlap in traffic will not think twice about misusing public funds. The fellow who finds it ok to beat his wife because he thinks it makes him a ‘man’ will not hesitate to mistreat those who work in his office.

More importantly we need to urgently raise our skills levels. The only reason why in the 60s we could compare with some Asian countries was because at that time Makerere University which was shared by the three East African countries could produce top class graduates with the competence to compete with the best. Simply put, the university was churning out performers.

Today we directed all our energies to producing statistics as opposed to performers. We cherish bragging about how so many people graduated at university, how so many youths passed to join the university or how so many children are now enrolled in primary under free education schemes. All are compared to years back in the 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s ignoring the glaring difference in quality.

Due to the above outlook and benchmarks the focus is just on how to grow those numbers. This is why our policy makers keep expressing disappointment at the dropout rates and not the disturbing fact that many graduates are unable to sustain a conversation in the same language they have been instructed in for years. One of my lecturers at Makerere once said that universities do not teach grammar and that anyone who had trouble with grammar at university was a sign that the system was already broken.

We have also been quick to turn vocational schools into universities so that we can count more university degrees instead of quality furniture made or reliable car mechanics produced. Put simply it is time we weaned ourselves from this obsession with numbers and focused on performance of the individuals in the system.

No amount of bragging about oil and gas reserves or the endless flow of foreign direct investment and aid from our ‘generous’ friends will take us where we want to be. As we quote and discuss the legacy of Lee Kuan Yew, we should know that he worked with a high level of discipline and skill to achieve what he achieved.