Celebrating the 2016 Int'l Human Rights Day

HUMAN RIGHTS DAY: NIGERIA’S CONSTITUTION ON MY MIND

         

Today, December 10, the world over is commemorating the 2016 Human Rights Day. In 1950, the United Nations (UN) General Assembly proclaimed 10^th December of every year as Human Rights Day, to bring the attention of people of the world to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as the common standard of achievement for all peoples as well as all nations.

          

The theme of this year’s anniversary is ‘Stand up for someone’s rights today!’ This implies that every so often a certain thing/event that is of astounding importance comes to pass that we must stand up and recognize it. We are required to place such thing on the pedestal it deserves, and ensure that the precepts and policies put in place by it are adhered to, appreciated as well as spread as far as the human voice would carry. Such is the sort of message sent by Human Rights Day.

          

In any existing society, everyone is entitled to certain rights and/or privileges, as the case may be, which signifies the value of that person in the society in question. This phenomenon is invariably regarded by all and sundry as ‘human rights.’ Human rights are moral principles or norms that describe certain standards of human behaviour and are regularly safeguarded as legal rights in both national and international laws. They are usually seen as undeniable fundamental rights to which a person is inherently entitled, because he/she is a human being, and bona-fide member of the society, regardless of the person’s location, language, skin colour, religion, social affiliations, ethnic origin, and background, among other statuses.

          

Human rights are universal and supreme, in the sense that it is being applicable everywhere and at every time; and they are also egalitarian, in the sense of being the same for everyone. They require empathy and the rule of law, and impose an obligation on persons to respect the human rights of others.

          

It’s fundamentally forbidden for human rights to be taken away, or overlooked by any person, officer, court of law, or instituted authority, unless as a result of due process based on specific circumstances. Ordinarily, human rights require freedom from unlawful molestation, discrimination, assault, torture, detention, imprisonment, and/or execution, which have recently been the order of the day in most localities, particularly Nigeria. It’s not anymore news that in most homes across the federation, housewives are living not unlike mere slaves unknowingly to their parents/guardians; needless to say that they are dying in silence as each day unfolds.

         

Rape and paedophilia, among other forms of child abuse, have abruptly dominated the polity. In our various schools, a teacher, rather than function as the mentor of the pupil under his custody, would prefer to be a tormentor. Yet each day, this set of deviants walk freely on our roads and streets, thereby making concerned Nigerians insinuate that the country’s constitution that ought to protect people’s rights is docile and incapacitated. 

          

The doctrine of human rights has been highly influential within national and international laws coupled with regional and global institutions. Actions by states and non-governmental organizations form a basis of public policy worldwide. There is a consensus that human rights encompasses a wide variety of rights such as the right to life, fair trial, prosecution, protection against enslavement, prohibition of genocide, free speech, information dissemination, choice of religion, and a right to education. Though some thinkers or schools of thought are of the view that human rights ought to comprise a minimum requirement to avoid the worst case abuses, others see the wide variety as a higher standard.

          

Many of the basic ideas that yielded the Human Rights Movement came up in the aftermath of the Second World War and the atrocities of The Holocaust. The aforementioned ideas or views culminated in the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Paris, France by the UN General Assembly in the year 1948, although the ancient people did not have the same modern day ideology of universal human rights - thus people’s rights were still not safeguarded as required.

          

The real forerunner of human rights crusade was the concept of natural rights which appeared as part of the medieval natural law tradition that became notable during the enlightenment by philosophers like Francis Hutcheson, John Locke and Jean-Jacques Burlamaqui, and which featured predominantly in the political thrives of both the American and French Revolutions. The modern human rights arguments emerged during the half of the twentieth century possibly as a reaction to slavery, torture, genocide, and war crimes, as a realization of inherent human vulnerability and as being a precondition for the emergence of the anticipated just society.

          

Owing to the supremacy and universality of human rights, every adopted constitution or bye-law creates a special column which categorically stipulates the rights and privileges binding the entire members of the society/group that abides by the mandates of the said constitution, and such provision is bound to remain sacrosanct among the members unless unanimous amendments are made to that effect.

          

Frankly, adequate recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the rudiments of freedom, peace and justice in the world. And since all human beings were born free and equal in dignity and rights, there is an absolute need for the fundamental rights stipulated in any constitution to be duly upheld, in order to put to a stop all categories of human rights abuse taking place in all nooks and crannies across the globe.

          

So, as Nigeria joins the rest of the world to commemorate the 2016 edition of the Human Rights Day, the mandate of any adopted constitution or bye-law regarding fundamental rights and privileges should be treated as sacrosanct or supreme by the overall members of the society in question irrespective of their statuses, and that every member regardless of his/her status ought to be a beneficiary to such provision. In other words, this day calls for outright protection of all the extant laws cum Acts in Nigeria, particularly the country’s 1999 Constitution, as amended, which represents the overall interest of the citizenry.

         

It’s equally imperative not to hesitate in amending any law/Act whenever the need arises. Every extant law deserves to be reviewed from time to time with the sole aim of making amends if need be, hence, such approach shouldn’t be taken for granted by the legislature. Moreover, a law that is not being properly implemented by the apt authority is just ceremonial, thus the various law enforcement agencies must leave no stone unturned towards ensuring that the needful is invariably done in their respective jurisdictions. The judicial custodians ought to as well curtail the ongoing high level of prolonged court hearing.        

         

The civil society activists on their part are expected to, at all times, display fierce and uncompromising attitudes towards upholding the nobility of human rights. Regardless of our ages, occupations and affiliations, it’s our civic responsibility to ensure at all cost that the country’s laws as well as Acts are viable and duly safeguarded. Think about it!

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#WisdomTablets (5)

Never Look Down on Anyone
________________________

Life, sometimes, could be funny. It's arguably
a mystery. You never can tell what becomes
your fate the next second. This is the reason
you must treat everyone as important. Never
you let anyone down. Intriguingly, that person
you refer to as imbecile might be the one who
could proffer remedy to that plight ravaging
your life.

Show everyone around you that they are needed
regardless of their status, background, or age. Do
not qualify people by how they look or the kind
of perfume they wear. Knowledge isn't measured
by any of these; neither is it measured by one's
action. Mind you, someone might often act crazily
but behold he/she is loaded knowledge wise.

Try to engage one in a tete-a-tete, or one-on-one chat,
before qualifying them. Most people possess hidden
qualities that can only be discovered having spent a
reasonable time with them. Don't despise/discard
someone or a fellow so easily because of a certain
behaviour displayed by him/her. Sometimes,
circumstances might make one act in a certain way
unknowingly or unintentionally.

Besides, we are all accustomed to, or blessed with, a
certain character, and every character was created for
a purpose. Every circumstance or occasion is in need
of at least a particular unique character.

Go close to people before rating them. The world
is a funny place; always recall this. It would enable
you not to look down on anyone. #ThinkAboutIt

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The Periodic Table Welcomes Four New Elements

THE PERIODIC TABLE WELCOMES FOUR NEW ELEMENTS

         

For those who are science-inclined, particularly chemists as well as Chemistry-oriented students and researchers, four new chemical elements were officially and permanently added to the Periodic Table of elements on 30^th November 2016, thereby creating a new face in the world of physical sciences and technology in general.

        

The Periodic Table is a tabular arrangement of chemical elements in columns and rows, in accordance with their atomic numbers – number of protons, electron configurations, as well as recurring chemical properties. The order of arrangement signifies periodic trends. The vertical columns are known as ‘groups’ whereas the horizontal rows are called ‘periods’. Within each row (period), the elements are metals on the left and non-metals on the right.

         

Earlier in January 2016, it was announced that four new elements had been discovered, subject to earn a permanent spot on the periodic table with elements 113, 115, 117, and 118 rounding out the seventh row. At the time, they all had temporary names and symbols, but at the moment, they enjoy new and permanent names namely, Nihonium, Moscovium, Tennessine, and Oganesson. Teams of researchers from the United States (US), Russia, and Japan have been credited with the discovery of these new elements, thus were given the naming rights – which come with some basic criteria.

        

As stipulated by the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC), the body responsible for confirming the discovery of new elements, any new element must be named after any of the following: a mythological concept or character, including an astronomical object; a mineral or similar substance; a place or geographical region; a property of the element in question; or, a scientist.

       

The scientists first synthesized the new elements between 2002 and 2010, but it wasn’t until December 2015 that the IUPAC officially recognized the discoveries. Then in June of this year, the scientists who discovered the super-heavy, highly reactive elements sent IUPAC their suggested names for the elements, based on the aforementioned guideline. After a five-month waiting period when members of the public could ask questions about the new elements or tender contrary view if necessary, as the tradition requested, which expired on 8^th November 2016, the foursome were unanimously approved by IUPAC, formally filling their boxes in Chemistry’s most fundamental table – the Periodic Table.

       

Nihonium of atomic number 113 is with symbol Nh, Moscovium of 115 has symbol Mc, Tennessine of 117 goes with symbol Ts, whilst Oganesson of 118 has symbol Og. Nihonium was derived from ‘Nippon’, a Japanese word meaning literally Japan. Moscovium honours the Russian capital city, Moscow.  Tennessine is named after the state of Tennessee, USA known for its pioneering research in Chemistry. According to IUPAC, Tennessine is in recognition of the contribution of the Tennessee region to super-heavy elements’ research. This marks the second US state to be honoured on the periodic table, following California – referenced by Californium (element 98), which was discovered in the 1950s. Similarly, Hassium (element 108) was named after the German state of Hesse.

       

Oganesson is named after the 83-year-old Russian physicist, Yuri Oganessian. History has it that this is barely the second time a new element would be named after a living scientist. The first time such occasion occurred – when in 1993 a team at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory proposed naming element 106 (Seaborgium) after the US nuclear-Chemistry pioneer, Glenn Seaborg – it led to huge controversy. At the time, an IUPAC committee rejected the proposal after passing a resolution that elements were not to be named for living scientists, but the name was later allowed after further deliberations.

         

One may wonder why these four elements took so long to make it on the periodic table. Unlike the classics, such as Gold, Iron, and Aluminium, these new elements are not found in nature. They are synthetic elements that can only be created in the lab, and they decay so fast after synthesis. For years, the teams behind their discovery didn’t have an opportunity to get a proper look before they morphed into something else entirely.

       

Kosuke Morita from Japan, one of the scientists that discovered Nihonium, said ‘For over seven years, we continued to search for data conclusively identifying element 113 but we just never saw another event. However, I was not prepared to give up as I believed that one day, if we persevered, luck would fall upon us again.’ Hence, the persistence eventually yielded an absolute success.

       

It’s worth noting that the heaviest element in nature remains Uranium, which has 92 protons. But heavier elements that have more protons in their nucleus can be created via nuclear fusion. The way elements are made nowadays is by shooting a beam of an existing element at another element, and then seeing what happens when they collide. It’s interesting to acknowledge that the Japanese team is now focused on inventing element 119 and beyond. So hopefully, soonest, a dragonian element might be invented.

        

Based on the new incredible development, it’s needless to reiterate that it is high time researchers, teachers and students changed their Chemistry-related text books and research materials. A delay might be disastrous. Think about it!

 

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