The place of local government in any federating nation cannot be overemphasized. In a bid to repo... more The place of local government in any federating nation cannot be overemphasized. In a bid to reposition local government in Nigeria to effectively carry out its constitutional functions of providing governance at the grassroots level, successive governments since independence had undertaken one reforms or the other. Despite most of these laudable reforms, the local governments system has continued to be plagued with the problems of funding, undue interference from the state government and as well inadequacy in the provision of social and economic development functions thus, providing the basis for the several reforms. It is against this backdrop that this paper x-rays the trajectory of local government administration reforms in Nigeria over the years and understanding some of the shortcomings of these reforms and proffering suggestions on repositioning the local government for effective grassroots development. The paper concludes that that local government in the country have consistently and shamelessly failed to live up to their expectation in Nigeria over the years despite the laudable reforms that have been undertaken by both the military and civilian administration and thus need a reform that promotes policies that will entrench democratic ethos, good governance, financial autonomy and accountability in order to make it more effective, efficient, responsible and responsive to the people at the grassroots. The paper recommends among others that any reform of the local government must take into cognizance the system of local government administration by democratically elected local government councils as guaranteed by section 7(i) of the Nigerian constitution and that state governments should be prohibited from setting up caretaker committees or appointing sole administrators to run the affairs of local government as obtainable in most states of the federation; and also measures should be taken to make local government elections much more transparent and credible in order to forestall the "complete sham" being conducted by State Independent Electoral Commissions in the country in the guise of local government elections, thus allowing INEC to conduct local government elections.
The place of local government in any federating nation cannot be overemphasized. In a bid to repo... more The place of local government in any federating nation cannot be overemphasized. In a bid to reposition local government in Nigeria to effectively carry out its constitutional functions of providing governance at the grassroots level, successive governments since independence had undertaken one reforms or the other. Despite most of these laudable reforms, the local governments system has continued to be plagued with the problems of funding, undue interference from the state government and as well inadequacy in the provision of social and economic development functions thus, providing the basis for the several reforms. It is against this backdrop that this paper x-rays the trajectory of local government administration reforms in Nigeria over the years and understanding some of the shortcomings of these reforms and proffering suggestions on repositioning the local government for effective grassroots development. The paper concludes that that local government in the country have consistently and shamelessly failed to live up to their expectation in Nigeria over the years despite the laudable reforms that have been undertaken by both the military and civilian administration and thus need a reform that promotes policies that will entrench democratic ethos, good governance, financial autonomy and accountability in order to make it more effective, efficient, responsible and responsive to the people at the grassroots. The paper recommends among others that any reform of the local government must take into cognizance the system of local government administration by democratically elected local government councils as guaranteed by section 7(i) of the Nigerian constitution and that state governments should be prohibited from setting up caretaker committees or appointing sole administrators to run the affairs of local government as obtainable in most states of the federation; and also measures should be taken to make local government elections much more transparent and credible in order to forestall the "complete sham" being conducted by State Independent Electoral Commissions in the country in the guise of local government elections, thus allowing INEC to conduct local government elections.
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Papers by Ejeh Williams