2015 Electioneering Process and the Widening of Voters’ Political Consciousness

Electioneering process represents a formal procedure whereby a person is elected into a political office. Previous elections, in the political history of Nigeria, have recorded a high level of political apathy. Lack of interest, with reference to voters’ participation, has been a common political culture of the country. The massive rigging, recorded in previous elections, has led to the characterization of electioneering process by many Nigerians as “selection” instead of “election.” This ugly phenomenon has informed the growing voters’ political apathy recorded in the previous elections. This paper, therefore, raises some fundamental questions such as: when will an average Nigerian voter engage actively and consciously in the electioneering process and in the question of who becomes the leader in the country? How will the political confidence of an average Nigerian voter be restored? These passionate and mind-bugling questions have, however, been put to rest, following the just concluded 2015 electioneering process. Unlike the previous elections, which were marred generally by high level of voters’ apathy, the just concluded election marks a sharp deviation from the past, by ushering in an era of active political participants and a high level of political consciousness on the side of the electorate. Based on this, this paper, by means of historical hermeneutics/interpretation and philosophical analysis, argues that the just concluded 2015 electioneering process is a political eye-opener, in that it marked the beginning of a new era of active voters’ participation and in widening their political consciousness. Keywords: electioneering process, political apathy, political culture, political consciousness, political re-engineerin

A Genome-Wide Association Study of Diabetic Kidney Disease in Subjects With Type 2 Diabetes

dentification of sequence variants robustly associated with predisposition to diabetic kidney disease (DKD) has the potential to provide insights into the pathophysiological mechanisms responsible. We conducted a genome-wide association study (GWAS) of DKD in type 2 diabetes (T2D) using eight complementary dichotomous and quantitative DKD phenotypes: the principal dichotomous analysis involved 5,717 T2D subjects, 3,345 with DKD. Promising association signals were evaluated in up to 26,827 subjects with T2D (12,710 with DKD). A combined T1D+T2D GWAS was performed using complementary data available for subjects with T1D, which, with replication samples, involved up to 40,340 subjects with diabetes (18,582 with DKD). Analysis of specific DKD phenotypes identified a novel signal near GABRR1 (rs9942471, P = 4.5 x 10(-8)) associated with microalbuminuria in European T2D case subjects. However, no replication of this signal was observed in Asian subjects with T2D or in the equivalent T1D analysis. There was only limited support, in this substantially enlarged analysis, for association at previously reported DKD signals, except for those at UMOD and PRKAG2, both associated with estimated glomerular filtration rate. We conclude that, despite challenges in addressing phenotypic heterogeneity, access to increased sample sizes will continue to provide more robust inference regarding risk variant discovery for DKD.Peer reviewe