India on the Moon: Ìsẹ́, Isẹ́, and Ìsẹ̀se

Daughter: Hey, Mom, What God do they serve in India?

Mother: There is only one God, my friend—the God of Abraham, Isaac, sorry, Ishmael, and Jacob.

Daughter: That looks like 4 already. So, which do they serve in India?

Mother: Fool! There is only one God. They have too many gods in India. They are called Idols with the capital letter I or gods with the small letter g.

Daughter: Do you mean upper case I and lower case g?

Mother: No, no case, no controversy at all. In India, they serve a traditional Idol, wood, gold, and water, and not a modern God.

Daughter: Okay, Mom. Can an Idol teach someone how to go to the Moon?

Mother: Hmm. No, an Idol cannot teach. Only God.

Daughter: So, God taught the Indians how to get to the Moon.

Mother: No. It’s not God. Hmm. Maybe

Daughter: their lowercase g god.

Mother: Yes. Yes. their small letter g god taught them how to go to the Moon. Some even die trying. I don’t know what they are looking for upandan. It’s okay. Stop watching adult news and read your books so that you, too, can go to the Moon when you grow up.

Daughter: No, I don’t need to read. God, the one with the upper case G, will teach me how to get to the Moon.

Mother: No, you still need to read. Heaven helps those who help themselves.

Daughter: Mum, that’s where dead people live. I’m talking about going to the Moon now. When I’m very old, like Grandpa, I can go to heaven!

Mother: Give me the remote (control) …

Daughter: See Rishi Sunak!

Mother: Ehen?

Daughter: The Prime Minister. He is Indian, too.

Mother: Yes, you too would become Prime Minister in this land. The first black female Nigerian-British Prime Minister of the United Kingdom… Ori mi saanu mi o. Ah, Ojú ma’ati awọn ẹbi Baba ẹ.

Daughter: Don’t worry, mum, the God of Rishi will teach me how to be a Prime Minister - and an Astronaut, and a …

Mother: No way, you will not serve the god of Rishi. You are going to heaven. You will not go to the Moon. Heaven is your home. Omokomo. Your mouth will not kill you someday. Oh Lord, ehn, why did I bring this child back here, or should I just have left you at that mission school in Nigeria jẹjẹ?

ÌSẸ́: Sorry, Momma, Poor Countries don’t go to the Moon

A comparative analysis of countries that have made it to the Moon or attempted the same shows that they are not countries of poor people.

Global poverty statistics show that the chances of a country with more impoverished people than rich people going to the Moon are as far as the Moon to the Earth.

Source: Statista

Besides, governments who prioritise sponsoring trips to some holy foreign lands on Earth can hardly sponsor a trip to the Moon and Mars.

But India’s government considers its land Holy enough to work against poverty there.

India’s consistency in reducing high poverty rates contrasts with its Sub-Saharan African counterparts. In Nigeria, for instance, the land is not considered holy enough to reduce poverty there.

A review of the poverty data shows that Nigeria reduced the poverty rate by 17 percentage points, from 48% in 1985 to 31% in 2018. 

In a shorter period, between 1986 and 2018, India reduced it by 40 percentage points, from 51% to 11%.

This means that political leaders who have yet to learn how the poor can work themselves to prosperity, who cannot find a path for the unemployed to tread to full employment, cannot fashion a launch pad from which to leap from the Earth to the Moon.

But India’s leaders have a clue.

According to the BBC, “India’s Moon rover has taken its first steps on the lunar surface a day after the country made history by becoming the first to land near the south pole.

“Chandrayaan-3’s rover “ramped down” from the lander, and “India took a walk on the Moon!” the space agency said.

“The Vikram lander successfully touched down as planned on Wednesday evening. (See video here: Source: CNN)

“With this, India joins an elite club of countries to achieve a soft landing on the Moon, after the US, the former Soviet Union, and China.

Source: Statista

“The 26kg rover called Pragyaan (the Sanskrit word for wisdom) was carried to the Moon in the Vikram lander’s belly,” the BBC narrated further.

A US-based nonprofit organization, The Brookings Institution, noted: “At the end of May 2018, our trajectories suggest that Nigeria had about 87 million people in extreme poverty, compared with India’s 73 million. 

“What is more, extreme poverty in Nigeria is growing by six people every minute, while poverty in India continues to fall.”

Source: The Washington Post

The Moon is far.

Yet governments that fuel their national carriers to outer space and fund pilgrimages to uncharted celestial lands go all the way for a reason.

“After the dust raised by last evening’s landing had settled, panels on one side of Vikram opened to deploy a ramp to enable Pragyaan to slide down to the lunar surface.

It will roam around the rocks and craters, gathering crucial data and images to be sent back to Earth for analysis.

Pragyaan is carrying two scientific instruments that will try to find out what minerals are present on the lunar surface and study the chemical composition of the soil,” the BBC reported.

The Moon offers valuable scientific insights, resources for deep space missions, technological advancements, opportunities for international collaboration and economic growth, a stable location for climate studies, and a testing ground for future missions to Mars.

Technologies developed for moon missions have led to advancements in fields such as telecommunications, computing, and materials science, benefiting industries on Earth.

Also, establishing a presence on the Moon could create economic opportunities, including space tourism, mining, and research, potentially leading to new industries and jobs.

Yes. New industries and jobs. 

And these are the cures for Ise (poverty).

Isẹ́ L’ògùn Ìsẹ́: NBS’ 96% Employment Rate in Q3 2023

Clearly, Isẹ́ l’ògùn Ìsẹ́ (Work is the cure for poverty)

However, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) just released a bittersweet report on Work in Nigeria.

The NBS, in its latest labour statistics release, stated that it tweaked its methodology for accounting for employed and unemployed people.

Most of these updates were understandable. But one stood out. The NBS altogether readjusted the meter for measuring unemployment in Nigeria.

Source: NBS

The ‘new’ method now counts people who work for one hour in 7 days and are paid for it as employed people. Before, you had to work 20 hours in 7 days to be counted as employed.

Source: NBS

Under this updated definition, the NBS announced that the Unemployment rate in the first quarter of this year had fallen to 4.1% from 5.3% in the previous quarter.

This means 96 per cent of Nigerians above 15 years of age who are willing to work are employed.

While the NBS proudly states that it now measures unemployment by the International Labour Organisation’s (ILO) standards, it has yet to measure poverty by the United Nations and World Bank’s global standards.

While the International Poverty Line measures poor people as those living under $2.15 per day, Nigeria measures people by its own independent “national poverty line” due to its peculiarity.

When the NBS compares its Q3 2023 unemployment rate of 4.1% with the USA’s 3.5% in July 2023 and that of neighbouring Sub-Saharan countries, it ignores the fact that the US does not measure poverty the way it calculates its own.

While the US counts everyone living below $24.55 per day as poor, Nigeria counts people living under $0.5 (N376.44) per day as poor, even though the ‘international standard’ NBS is touting defines a person in Nigeria as poor if all he or she has to survive in a day is below $2.15 per day.

If the NBS remembers that golden verse in one of Nigeria’s indigenous scriptures, that says, isẹ́ l’ògùn ìsẹ́ (work is the cure for poverty), when it reduces the measure of work, it would increase the measure of poverty.

This current disobedience to Isese (Nigeria’s Indigenous economic thoughts, philosophy and practices) will mislead sincere economic and policy planners into thinking that a reduction in hours of work to a standard of 1 hour per week does not increase poverty in the country.

ÌSẸ́SE: NBS’ preference for foreign realities over homegrown realities

NBS’ jettisoning of its homegrown methodology for acknowledging employed people is not strange at all. It falls in line with a national pattern of importing other people’s realities and beliefs and dismissing one’s own.

Indians don’t copy the best beliefs, languages or ideas. They complement their indigenous faiths with foreign ones.

India has not killed all its Gods. The God of India remains the God of India. It teaches them the law of Karma—that what you sow, you reap.

Of course, all forms of understanding, misunderstanding, and overunderstanding of God believe in cause and effect. In this sense, Agnostics and Atheists, too, are believers.

The new NBS needs to remember that when you sow 1 hour of work and 167 hours of sleep as employment but refuse to report that Nigerians living under $2.15 per day are poor, you cannot reap what India’s homegrown approach to fighting poverty reaps today.

Dataphyte reported that the so-called new methodology is actually familiar. It’s been in place since 2013. However, the NBS thought it was not wise to classify a Nigerian who worked for 1 hour a week as employed, even when that was the popular global definition.

The NBS sudden departure from working norms shows that when we import popular solutions and best practices, we need to remember that those ideas were directed to answer problems set in a specific climate.

We need to seek a perfect understanding of the realities behind those imported ideas. Otherwise, we are smarter by half when we import ice from Canada to play winter sports in Nigeria.

It is worse when we destroy what is on the ground to make way for the foreign, just as the import of refined fuel, initially meant to augment local supply, has cost us our ability to refine locally produced crude oil.

This is what makes us dispense with homegrown ethics and economics and deny fellow indigenous people their rights to freedom of association and commemoration of their forefathers’ beliefs.

While Nigeria’s indigenous faiths tolerate all imported faiths, it is unfair and unjust to recompense custodians of these endangered faiths with such disrespect and intolerance, as was the case in Ilorin, Kwara State, Nigeria.

Anyway, while Nigeria’s future astronauts are still enmeshed in the dispute over which God will teach them the way to the Moon from Ilorin and other outposts of persecuted Isese, India busied itself working its way to the Moon and walking its way out of poverty.

Isẹ́ l’ògùn Ìsẹ́, Ẹmá gbàgbé Ìsẹ̀se o.

Thanks for reading this Data Dive. Share a verse on wisdom for everyday life from the written or unwritten scriptures of your indigenous faith and your thoughts on the possible take of points to the Moon from Nigeria with newsletter@dataphyte.com.

We love you to the Moon and back!