Today, let’s move away from the vaulting national grumblings about hunger, dollar rates, and protests. Let us, instead, look at some emerging global health issues; the final effects of which have not yet been fully determined, or understood. Our bodies, our health and the global ecosystem, are likely casualties. The danger looms for all humanity, because of the wide and continuous penetration of microplastics into our environment, our food and, wait for it, the placenta of unborn babies!

A relatively recent study published in the journal Toxicological Sciences by a team led by Matthew Campen, reported finding microplastics in all 62 donated placenta samples tested. The concentrations ranged from 6.5 to 790 micrograms per gram of tissue. Yes, a microgram is a laughably insignificant one millionth of a gram. But here is the catch: There is a steady rise in the amount of microplastics everywhere. Its likely overall, long-term effect and impact on the ecosystem generally, and on human life in particular, is yet to be determined.

But a few facts are clear so far, based on simple common sense and basic science. The first is that any substance that finds its way into an environment where it does not belong, and where it is not naturally supposed to be, is a foreign body. The second is that a foreign body can cause a mild upset, some disruption, or substantial damage. The third is that a poison does not become a threat to life until it has built up to a lethal dose. As things stand now, we may well be building up enough microplastics in our bodies to create physiological, or even possibly also physiognomic, Armageddon.

The aforementioned research discovered a way of making tissue samples give up whatever small nuggets of plastic are hidden in them. They used a process called saponification, which meant chemically treating the samples and then spinning them in an ultracentrifuge, after which they got the plastic nugget at the bottom of the tube.

Next, they put the plastic pellet in a metal cup and heated it to 600 degrees Celsius. Under this enormously high temperature, gas emissions emerged from the plastic particles. The emissions were captured, as different types of plastic combusted at specific temperatures. Anyone with a passing knowledge of Fractional Distillation, which explains Biafran refinery and our plethora of illegal refineries easy of today, will understand “different types of plastic combusted at specific temperatures”.

The gas emissions were then sent to a device for detecting and analysing the wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation. It was the device, a mass spectrometer, that broke things further down, even if with alarming details.   

On the matter of the inevitability of radiations, let us go back to what was said on this page on June 5, 2020. Under the caption, “5G Controversy Needs Honest Science”. In an attempt to place some elements of modern science before the reading public while the 5G controversy raged at he time, this column said: “It is a fact of science that everything on earth gives out a definite radiation. It is also a fact of science that what we call “matter”, like a table, or even our bodies, is just pure energy vibrating at a specific frequency. It is the frequency and rate of vibration that creates what we call shape, size, texture, etc.”

The article further said: “These particles also generate small electrical impulses, creating some sort of “field” around objects, even if only at a microscopic/atomic level for some of them. The human aura, for instance, is the result of electrical impulses, which continue from the subatomic level until they emerge as our electromagnetic field. What we eat, how we live and where we live can alter our aura significantly. So, using the term loosely if you like, electromagnetic fields are inevitable for all existents”.

Now, coming back to the issues before us today, the aforementioned researchers discovered that the most readily available polymer in the placental tissue they were experimenting with was polyethylene. This is the thing used for the manufacturing of plastic bags and plastic bottles. It was found to constitute 54% of the total plastics detected in the sample human placenta. The next in concentration was PVC (Polyvinyl chloride) and nylon, at about 10% of the total. The balance was made up of nine other polymers.

For the record, the word ‘polymer’ refers to a class of natural or synthetic substances composed of very large molecules. The large molecule, which are called macromolecules, are just a collection of simpler chemical units called monomers. Thus, many of the materials in living organisms, and which present the basic foundation for many minerals and man-made materials everywhere, are actually polymers.

In the matter under reference here today, some of the microplastics formed by splitting off from larger pieces of plastic. This could be plastics that fragmented over time, due to wear and tear. We may also think of particles artificially made very small intentionally, like the cosmetic microbeads used in facial scrubs.

Several recent studies are now finding microplastics in almost everything we eat today, from meat, fruits, bottled water and many otherwise natural food items. The new tools and methods adopted by the researchers in measuring the microplastics present in human placentas made it possible for what had remained difficult for a long time to be possible. And that is being able to quantify how much microplastic was present in human tissue.

It was no longer a question of researchers counting the number of particles under a microscope, no. The new approach made it possible to adequately quantify things and speak of the number of micrograms or milligrams per plastic under investigation.

The phenomenal increase in the use of plastics all over the world, over the last six decades, has translated into millions of metric tons of plastic waste. This is a general environmental hazard, a specific threat to natural waterways, and also an emerging menace to plant and animal life.

While it is true that plastics, over time, break down from exposure to the sun’s ultraviolet rays, as well as other agents of chemical denudation, it is also true that this only accentuates the problem. Some of the plastic ends up aerosolized, making them part of the combination of gases and radiations in the air we breath. Some of it also seeps down into natural water tables and become part of the groundwater we later pump up to drink.

Ingested or inhaled, microplastics still get into our system; and it stays back to create new, and strange, combinations of substances and radiations that lead to all manner of health disruptions. Human beings, aquatic animals, the local chicken out there, and general farm produce, are all in the line of fire. And this is not about to go away.

Many plastic products take between 50 and 300 years to fully degrade into simple elements and original compounds. That is what scientists mean when they say that many plastics have a long half-life; that is the amount of time needed for half of a sample to degrade. The question here for us are these: (1) How long will it take the microplastics everywhere today to fully degrade? What will be happening to us and our environment as this business of being degraded is going on? Is the global health community paying attention?

It is already a fact of science that we all have some amount of microplastics in our bodies. It is also clear that these microplastics should not have been there in the first place. What is not clear, as I write, is what damage it is doing to us and what possibly unmanageable health problems it is brewing without our knowing.

Now that we have some microplastics that can actually cross cell membranes and easily enter where they have no business in the human body, what next? What do you do, or say, about a piece of microplastic that is so small that it is measured in nanometers (that is one billionth of a meter), in a world where we had always assumed that plastics are biologically inert? You cannot have the type of blossoming agglomeration and concentration of microplastics in living human tissues without consequences.

Check out the type of baffling health problems that are springing up everywhere. Early onset of prostate problems in men, inflammatory bowel disease, growing cases of shockingly early onset of erectile dysfunction, colon cancer and inexplicable challenges with the human autonomic nervous system in many highly industrialized countries.

When you now stop to think about the conspicuous presence of microplastics in baby placenta, it becomes completely benumbing. Tissues containing everything needed to form every cell and every organ of the human body, and which had been in existence for less than on year, is loaded upfront with microplastics? And our cheerful production and use of plastics in massive quantities continues. As the researchers said, “… even if we were to stop it today, in 2050 there will be three times as much plastic in the background as there is now. And we’re not going to stop it today.”

So, it looks like microplastics are only a more recently recognized addition to the negative bombardments with which we human beings has resolved to finish ourselves. As was said in the article “5G Controversy Needs Honest Science” nearly four years ago: “… electromagnetic fields … are strongest close to their points of origin …it is open to argument whether any set of radiations will retain their original characteristics in the midst of an altered ecosystem. It is a fact of science that a substantial percentage of human exposure to man-made radiation comes from gadgets, home electronics and medical procedures.” Well, we now have microplastics”.

The article under reference continued: “Some electromagnetic radiations are strong enough to break bonds between molecules and introduce changes in the human DNA. This is what alters certain things in the shape, or functions, of certain cells of the body. Gamma rays from radioactive materials, cosmic rays and X-rays, also known as ‘ionizing radiation’, can do this. We are also being bombarded by denatured food, high-energy radiation/cosmic and intergalactic rays and particles admitted by our damaged Ozone Layer.”

The article said, still: “Radiation particles can pass through our bodies …The radiations can introduce breaks, or damages, in certain chemical bonds in the body. This breaking of chemical bonds distorts the genetic information in the living cells and introduce errors in the formation of certain body parts. The interfering radiations change the original formats of the various building blocks of our body. Skin cancer, for instance, is nothing but a disruption of the processes governing the development of normal skin. These are facts of science. People are advised against having more than one chest x-ray in a year, because a single exposure gives a dose of about 10 mrem. But we are running all over the place and doing full-body CT scans, of which one exposure gives a dose of 1,000 mrem.”

Watch out! Microplastics and harmful radiations are on the prawl.

In a catastrophic end to his third-term project, President Macky Sall announced in July 2023 that he would not seek re-election in February 2024, and many thought he had learnt from history. 

But the ambiguity of his press conference late Thursday (23^rd February 2024), has cast further doubts on the date for the country’s crucial presidential election, which he had unilaterally postponed. It would appear that the embattled president is still bent on testing the resolve of his angry compatriots.

Teranga in the Senegalese language Wolof means “peaceful or welcoming place.”

However, Senegal has been anything but peaceful in the past three years, no thanks to the political ambition of a president, who has spent 12 years in office having previously served as Prime Minister and President/Speaker of the National Assembly.

Once considered the bastion of stability in a politically restive West African region, the country is on the verge of losing its democratic credentials. Before Sall’s July 2023 climb down, unprecedented street protests in June had killed at least 16 people following the jailing of opposition leader Ousmane Sonko, the arrowhead and nemesis of Sall’s third-term project.

Then came the controversial screening of candidates for the presidential election scheduled for 25^th February 2024.

Twenty candidates including two women were approved by the Constitutional Council, but some of the candidates screened out, including Karim Wade, the son of former President Abdoulaye Wade, took their case of corruption allegation against two of the Constitutional Council members to Parliament.

But almost from the blues, Sall unleashed a bombshell of a decree on 3^rd February cancelling the 25 February election without setting any new dates for the vote.

A macabre drama, similar to the 6^th of January 2021 invasion of the Capitol (Congress building) in Washinton, was re-enacted in Senegal on the 5^th of February 2024, with paramilitary gendarmes storming the parliamentary chambers in Dakar to eject some opposition MPs, to clear the way for the passage of a controversial law, postponing the presidential election to December 2024.

A fresh round of street protests ensued with at least three deaths, before the Constitutional Council nullified both the presidential decree and law on the 15^th of February.

ECOWAS, the regional economic bloc, along with the European Union and indeed, the international community rejected the degree and the controversial law. They urged Senegalese authorities to respect the country’s electoral calendar and constitutional provisions which stipulates that Sall’s mandate ends on the 2^nd of April 2024.

In his response, President Sall took note of the Constitutional Council’s decisions and promised to consult with stakeholders to fix a new date for the presidential vote.

But in his press interview on Thursday, Sall still left everyone guessing. In one breath he said his presidential term would not last beyond 2^nd of April 2024, but still casts doubts on the date for the election.

Much more confusing was his reference to a Constitutional provision he says requires an outgoing president to handover to a newly elected one.

Curious observers are wondering if Sall really intends to leave power, even when Senegal’s Constitution is unambiguous that in the absence of the president of the Republic, the President/Speaker of Parliament will assume the presidency. There are indications that the president still has some surprises up his sleeve for the Teranga nation.

"On April 2, 2024, my mission ends as the head of Senegal," the president said, seemingly indicating that he would not stay in office beyond the 2^nd of April.

"As far as the date (for the presidential election) is concerned, we'll see what the dialogue comes up with," he added during a televised press interview.

"The election can be held before or after April 2," he said, but when pressed, he said he did not think the election would be possible before April 2.

As a gesture of appeasement, Sall has promised to free dozens of political prisoners including Sonko and another opposition leader Bassirou Faye.

But social and political tensions are simmering in Senegal and the animosity generated by his alleged refusal to receive the Chairman of the ECOWAS Authority and Nigerian President Bola Tinubu, who reportedly cancelled his planned peace mission to Senegal can only fuel the political uncertainty in the country and the ECOWAS region.

Sixteen of the 20 presidential candidates cleared by the Constitutional Council have rejected Sall’s invitation to the dialogue he called for Monday and Tuesday to fix a new date for the presidential election.

Like the dissenting political coalitions, many civil society organisations have also rejected his invitation to the dialogue, and instead called for a protest march, claiming the dialogue is a ploy by the president for tenure elongation after the illegal postponement of the presidential vote which the opposition called a "constitutional coup.”

The Constitutional Council, which has the final say on election matters, would be expected to step in again should the stakeholders fail to reach an agreement on the date for the presidential vote.

The situation in Senegal only compounds the problems for ECOWAS, whose leaders are meeting in Abuja on Saturday with the decision of three of its member States - Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger - to withdraw from the regional bloc high on the agenda.

The three and a fourth country, Guinea, are under military dictatorships and ECOWAS is struggling to restore constitutional order through reasonable transition programmes in the wayward countries.

The summit is expected to heed the public appeal for the lifting of ECOWAS sanctions on the four countries by General Yakubu Gowon, one of the ECOWAS founding fathers.

The regional leaders are also expected to discuss the situation in Senegal, unless the country’s delegation manages to knock the issue off the agenda, like they did during the recent extraordinary Ministerial summit of the ECOWAS Mediation and Security Council.  

*Ejime, an Author, is a Global Affairs Analyst and Consultant on Peace & Security and Governance Communications

No amount of condolences, prayers, sympathies and commiseration could ever fathom the depth of the grief of Papa Shyngle and Mama Stella Wigwe. And the reason is simple: no parents should ever have to bury any of their children. The reverse should always be the case. And this is a deep principle of humanity that is not restricted by culture or society. It is just simply the natural order of things. It is fundamental—and indeed a thing of joy for all parents—that they would be buried by their children. When the reverse happens, and one loses a child, then the entirety of one’s existence is shrunk into that indissoluble vacuum of pain and grief. The depth of that sorrow becomes bottomless when one loses more than one child. Since I heard about the terrible calamity that befell this beautiful octogenarian couple, I have come to fathom the depth of what Aeschylus, the ancient Greek tragedian, meant when he said, “There is no pain so great as the memory of joy in present grief.”

This brief statement sums up the depth of the bereavement of Papa and Mama Wigwe: their minds would be clouded simultaneously with remembrances of the births of their sons, their upbringing and naughtiness while growing up, their struggles to raise them as godly as God would permit, their collective memories of moments of joys and happy events and incidences, their family traditions and Christian values, the successes of their children, and many more. All this while their entire being register as starkly as it can the fact that a second child just died with his family when they had barely dealt with the pain of losing the first one. But there is more. Papa and Mama Wigwe are solid Christians. I can attest to that. And they have been serving God for as long as my memory of relating with them (albeit from a distance) could permit. Since this tragic incidence happened, the first verse of the first chapter of Job has run ceaselessly in my mind: “There was a man in the land of Uz, whose name was Job; and that man was perfect and upright, and one that feared God, and eschewed evil.” This is my summation of Papa and Mama Wigwe.

And yet, they lost two children. The story of Job is one of the most challenging books of the Bible. And its challenge is purely because of demonstrating one of the cornerstones of a deep theological paradox: how could a good God create a world that is filled with evil, or even permit those committed to him to be ravaged by such evils? Since God created the world and certified that his creation is good, how did evil creep in? The problem of evil in a world created by a good God has troubled Christian theologians and apologetics, from St. Augustine to Ravi Zacharias, for centuries. Losing two fully grown children that one had trained to such a period in their lives does not square with the joy of bringing them into the world and the sacrifices of upbringing. And yet, Osita and Herbert left their parents in the world.

The theological problem caused by the life and trauma of Job in the bible also raises a larger philosophical question I will like to touch in this lamentation. For anyone who has read the book of Job and has witnessed the tragedy that good people have encountered in life, the question is: why do bad things keep happening to good people? Papa and Mama Wigwe are good people. Both have been together for 56 six years, more than five decades of a love story sweetened by the birth of six children, including Osita and Herbert. When in an interview, Papa reminisced about Osita— “That boy was one in a million. He had the attributes of a daughter; he had the attributes of a son. He was a solution provider to all family problems”—I have a deep and intimate sense of what Papa Wigwe was talking about. I encountered Osita as a graduate student at the University of Ibadan (he was then a final-year engineering student), and I knew him deeply at many of his beautiful and humane personality. Pa Wigwe was then the DG at the Nigerian Television Authority, and that was how I met him and Mama for the first time.

Osita was a very brilliant young man. I know this because we were both members of the University of Ibadan debating team, and I had a first-hand experience of how an engineering student could be so deeply knowledgeable and magisterial in a field usually dominated by students from the humanities and the social sciences. When I raised the issue of why he was an engineering student and not in, say, the humanities, his response gave me a solid insight into the deep flow of affection between father and son, and how that led to Osita’s desire to follow in the footsteps of his father the engineer. During a period when I was still searching for an intellectual enlightenment, rather than a spiritual one, I was immensely fascinated with Osita Wigwe, his intellectual brilliance, deep family values and pure spiritual commitment. It was essentially due to him that I visited the RCCG for the first time in 1986, and would eventually become a staunch member much later. Which was why I was baffled and very confused as to how such a spiritual father could experience the death of such a godly son—the same way I could still never wrap my head round the death of Pastor Enoch Adeboye’s son, Dare. And then twenty-seven years later after Osita’s demise, as if God still has some unfathomable purpose for Pa and Ma Wigwe, Osita’s kid-brother is taken.

Questions and more puzzling questions. Who knows why the Almighty would allow Job to be tempted? Who knows why sit-tight African leaders, the very incarnate of the diabolical, who sit on the people’s democratic liberation, would just not topple over and be transited? Job imparted an everlasting lesson that each one of us increasingly come to internalize and try as much as we have it within us to live with: humans are born to troubles. In philosophical terms, for Fredrich Nietzsche, “To live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering.” This is one juncture where the pastoral calling would be a heavy burden for Papa and Mama Wigwe to bear. This is a time when it would be justified for even a role model with a spiritual responsibility to give vent to his or her doubts and frustrations with life and with God. This is a Job moment. It is a moment to reflect back to June 5, 1997, drag that reflection to the fiery trauma of February 9, 2023, and then try to connect the dots in existential and spiritual terms. Where could the hands of the Almighty be in all this? How could the meaning and purpose be uncovered?

Eventually, we all—believers, agnostics and non-believers alike—must bow before the inscrutable universe, and the denseness of the mystery that pervades all we have to deal with in life. For Christians, “great is the mystery of godliness” (I Timothy 3:16). Great is also the mystery of why good people like Papa and Mama Wigwe needed to suffer the death of two sons. We can theorize all we want about why terrible and traumatic things happen to good people. And yet we must eventually just accept that we are powerless against the Divine Mind that crafted a world where humans have survived—borne on the wings of faith—the harshest, cruelest and most challenging of all trials. Indeed, there are those who have passed through the excruciating valley of the shadow of death, but received grace and mercy to look back in gratitude for God’s deep wisdom in holding the world together, and holding us together at the critical moments of our needs.

Now close to their nine decades in life, Papa Shyngle and Mama Stella Wigwe have walked with God for far too long not to be able to recognize His presence at this moment of unbearable sorrow—no matter how dim that presence might be now. No matter how intrusive and heavy the question of why the hand of the Almighty was heavy upon them, they must find comfort in Jesus’ sorrowful lamentation on the cross: “My Father, my Father, why have you forsaken me?” Papa and Mama Wigwe are knowledgeable about the purpose behind the crucifixion of the Lord; may they be able to find a good grip on God’s wisdom that mold us all in the fiery furnace of life.

Let me conclude this difficult homily with William Blake, the English poet: “Can I see another's woe, and not be in sorrow too? Can I see another's grief, and not seek for kind relief?” But I ask: How much sympathy, weeping, lamentation or homilies can comfort one in perplexing loss? We can only drown our grief in the assurance that God—the owner of the universe and our lives—knows what he is doing.

When peace like a river attendeth my way,
when sorrows like sea billows roll;
whatever my lot, thou hast taught me to say,
"It is well, it is well with my soul."

It is well with Papa Shyngle and Mama Stella; it is well with the entire Wigwe family.

Intellectual property rights law is quite interesting and most times controversial: An intending husband and wife hire a photographer and pay the photographer handsomely to come and cover their wedding. By common sense, the husband and wife are right to assume that since they have paid the photographer, every picture of theirs snapped by the photographer ought to legally belong to them. But no, that’s not what the law says; the law says that though you have paid the photographer, though it is your image that was snapped by the photographer, those pictures legally belong to the photographer and not the couple. The same goes when a family invites a photographer to come to their house and snap them family photos for their family portrait, same goes when a parent(s) invites a photographer to come and capture the images of their infant. That your family portrait, that your child’s image captured by the photographer belongs to the photographer and not you or your child. In fact, by law, before you do anything with those wedding pictures or family portraits, you need to seek the consent of the photographer or else he has the right to commence an action against you for copyright infringement. 

Cases like these have gone to court and the courts have all agreed that the photographer owns the copyright of every picture taken by him with his camera even though he has been paid for the photos. The landmark case that must always be mentioned whenever image copyright in Nigeria is being discussed is the case of BANIRE V. NTA STAR TV (CA/A/345/2017).

In the above case, Ms Banire, a photographer/videographer brought legal action against NTA Star TV because NTA Star TV used her images for outdoor advertisements on billboards mounted all around Abeokuta and Akure without her consent and authorization. This, she claimed, amounted to infringement of her copyright on those images. NTA TV stars, on the other hand, raised the defence that they acquired and paid for those pictures, although through a third party, hence, they did not infringe on Ms Banire’s copyright to the images. 

On appeal, the appellate court held that the law has afore provided in Sections 10 and 51 of the Copyright Act, that it is that it is the photographer and not the person in the image that owns the copyright to the picture. His Lordship, Justice Muhammed Baba Idris (JCA), reiterated “What is evident from the above provision is that the person who is a muse or the person in the photograph is not in fact the author and therefore he/she does not own copyright in the photograph. Rather it is the person who took the photograph that is the author.”

The only time when a person who has been snapped or who pays for the photos can own the copyright in those images is when there has been a transfer of copyright ownership in writing from the photographer to the person or when the photographer signs a release form, releasing the intellectual properties in those images to the person. 

 Stan Alieke is an Abuja based legal practitioner.

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