Local Government and the Challenges of Grassroots Development in Nigeria

The rural Nigeria has the largest number of citizens with not less than 75% of the country’s total population living in the rural areas. It is the collective desire of this vast majority of the Nigerian population to access development irrespective of political, economic and social status. The local government is the most veritable agent of developing the rural areas. This is informed by the local government’s proximity to the people at the grassroots level and its intimate knowledge of the needs, aspirations and preferences of the rural people, which it could bring to bear on the formulation of rural development policies and programmes to address the developmental needs of the people. Despite the vantage position of the local government for effective and efficient services delivery at the local level, it has failed to perform to expectations in grassroots development across the country. This has inspired this paper to interrogate what challenges have constrained the effective performance of the local government in grassroots development and to suggest measures to address such challenges. The paper concludes that despite the poor performance of the local government in grassroots development, it is still best suited to engender development at the local level, hence the urgent and compelling need to fix the local government system in order to enhance its service delivery capacity.