Daughter: Hey, Mom, What God do they serve in India?
Mother: There is only one God, my friend. The God of Abraham, Isaac, Ishmael, and Jacob.
Daughter: That looks like 4 already. So, which of them 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, Oju ma’ati awon ebi Baba e.
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 jeje?
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 show that they are not countries of poor people.
Global poverty statistics show that the chances of a country with more extremely poor people than rich people going to the moon are as far as the moon to the Earth.
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.
“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.”
The moon is far.
Yet governments who fuel their national carriers to outer space, who fund pilgrimage 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 now 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 which 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 cure for Ise (poverty).
Isẹ́ L’ògùn Ìsẹ́: NBS’ 96% Employment Rate in Q3 2023
Clearly, Ise l’ogun Ise (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.
The ‘new’ method now counts people who work for one hour in 7 days and are paid for such as employed people. Before, you had to have worked for 20 hours in 7 days to be counted as employed.
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.