THE IMPACT OF LOCAL GOVERNMENT IN COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT IN AKWA IBOM STATE

THE IMPACT OF LOCAL GOVERNMENT IN COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT IN AKWA IBOM STATE (A CASE STUDY OF ITU LOCAL GOVERNMENT AREA, ITU)

CHAPTER ONE

BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY

• GENERAL INTRODUCTION

The local government is the third tier of government and closes to the grassroots. The chairman or head of council is the arrowhead of the community development (Akai, 2005). Local government is a tier of government possessing the three criteria of entity existence, government character and autonomy. It operates under a freed and independent circumstance. Ugwu (2007) defined local government as the third tier level of government created for the purpose of efficient and effective administration unit of the localities. It is a political and administrative unit that empowered by law to administer any locality or community. On the other hand, Okoli (2005), sees community development as the process by which the efforts of the people are limited with those of government authorities to improve the economic, social and cultural conditions of communities to integrate those communities into the life of the nations and to enable them to contributes fully to the national progress.

However, the broad motive of local government is to ensure grassroots’ participation in the government and thereby encourages the growth and development of communities. The role of local government in community development according to Ona (2009), was because the local government was “bother placed or has the superior capacity to understand and conduct their local affairs” the rationale for the assertion is that the government is the nearest government to the community dwellers and it has the capacity to identify their needs and demand than the other two tiers of governments (Federal and State). Also, local government has abundant and human resources when fully tapped and utilized will become valuable instrument for community development.

Community development ideally, this is a process whereby the local government in concert with higher levels of governments, bring about comprehensive improvement in the lives of the people within its area of jurisdiction. It is believed that this two ideals relationship between community development and local government provides an existing framework not only for decision making with respect to community but also for coordinating assistance from other agencies of the central government (state and federal) and even from international agencies.

The focus of this work is to assess the role of local government on community development using Itu Local Government Area as a case study.

• Statement of the Problem

Local government was created to enhance political participation and participatory development at the grassroots level. This means that local government is an agent of community development. However, a work at communities in the local government area shows that a lot of communities are lacking the indication of development. This is the problem what could be responsible for this?

What are community development programme of the local government? What are programmes of the Itu local government? What is the extent of community development programmes on the development of the communities? What are the problems facing Itu local government in its community development effort? These and many more questions are what the work will seek to provide answer to.

1.2 Objectives of the Study

The main objective of this work is to assess the role of local government in community development. The specific objectives are to:

1. To identify community development programmes in Itu Local Government Area.
2. Examine the relevance of those programmes to the development of Itu Local Government Area.
3. Access the extents of community development programme on the development communities in Itu Local Government Area.
4. Identify the problem facing Itu Local Government in its community development.