An Exposition of The Relevance of Local Governments in the Administration of Grassroot in Nigeria

Abstract

The focus of this paper is to reiterate the need for the existence and not
scrapping of Local Governments as the third tier of Government in Nigeria.
There are presently three levels of governance in the country today. Due to
the way Local Governments are being handled by the politicians, especially,
the State Chief Executive, Governors and the leadership of political parties,
which has made this third tier of Government to be almost irrelevant, a lot
of debate is going on concerning whether to scrap the Local Government
systems completely and concentrate on the remaining two tiers viz; Federal
and State or not.
This paper looks into the origin of the local governments as a
constitutional creation and examined its sources of funding as well as brought
out the special duties statutorily allocated to this third tier, in comparison
with the three arms of government – Executive, Legislature and the Judiciary
– each working without disturbing the others. Problems with the local
government system as currently ran in Nigeria and why they are seemingly
ineffective was also expensed. The piece finally submits that since the
Local Governments as the statutory third tier of Government in Nigeria is
the closest to the people at the grass root, and democracy has been defined as government of the people, by the people and for the people, the arm
must rather be strengthened instead of being scrapped.