CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1     BACKGROUND TO THE STUDY
Nigeria operates a federal system of government with a Federal Capital Territory (Abuja), 36 states and 774 local governments. As creatures of the federal government, local governments are constitutionally mandated to perform four basic functions: to provide a machinery for the discussion of local needs and for the provisions of corresponding services within the competence and capability of the local area; to provide machinery for the execution at the local level of regional or federal government policy; to provide a consensus mechanism for the resolution of conflicts of interest at the local level; and to provide a training ground for political participation and articulation (Okoli,2000).This implies that Nigerian local governments are to render cutting edge services that will foster socio-economic development of the rural people which can be otherwise described as grassroots development. If properly managed, local governments are viable instrument for rural transformation, development and the delivery of social services to rural communities in their jurisdiction (Sanda, 1988). Historically speaking, local governments have been assigned different functions. In colonial time, native authorities were primarily established for maintenance of law and order. With the emergence of independence, emphasis shifted from laws enforcement to the provision of social services (Adeyemo, 2005). How well Nigerian local governments have carried out their constitutionally mandated functions of grassroots development have become a subject of national debate, among scholars and practitioners. To say the least, their operations have come under serious and severe criticisms with some persons calling for the scrapping of the third tier of government. Local government service delivery has continued to dwindle and epileptic in nature despite financial allocations, local government reforms like the 1976. In Nigeria, the rural people, thoroughly marginalized into a vacuous existence, make up the other Nigerians-forgotten and always forgotten. The line is like a perpetually recurring bad dram, a tale of extreme want in the midst of abundance. There has been an administration upsurge of interest in the literature on development administration and in planning circles on the positive role local government could play in national development. Usually the emphasis is in terms of using local government as a strategic instrument for fostering, promoting and implementing grassroots development. In Nigeria, local government as the tier of government nearest to the grassroots, has since the colonial era been recognized as an institution capable of transforming the live of the rural inhabitants either to create new local governments or to revamp the existing ones in the country with the objectives of utilizing them as fulcrums of rural development. The continuous emphasis on grassroots development is understandable for it is there that the great mass of the people are,: it is there that most indigenous resources of men and land are underused, there that nutrition can be tackled; there that success would be done most to slow the migration to major cities and finally, it is there that some redress of gross inequality in income distribution can be started.