THE ROLE OF LOCAL GOVERNMENT IN COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT

CHAPTER ONE

1.0   BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY

          Local government is the lowest tier of government anywhere in the world. It is very important because it is very close to the people as a result of its multi-purpose in term of carrying out socio-economic service in the local areas, promoting the democratic process, serving as training ground for national political leaders and serving as medium of communication between the people and the higher tiers of government.

          However, local government needs to be viable before achieving these purposes. The liability of local government in turn depends on the nature of the power shared and the society. Where power is divided to local government, they are likely to be liable while in case of de-concentration of power they are bound to be unviable. This gives rise to both terminologies of local government (as in devotedly) and local administration (as in documentation) the latter amount to more filed agent which operate execute the policies of the higher government, while the firmer possesses were legal competence and more autonomy in the areas of self rule and mobilization of resources (Tumba 2005).

          Community development can be described as the process where community members come together to take collective actions and generate solutions to common problems, community wellbeing (economic, social, environmental and cultural) often evolves from this type of collective action being taken at a grassroots level. Community development ranges from small initiatives within a small group to large initiative that involves the broader community.

          The concept of community pr-suppose the mobilization by government or the people of that locality, local human and materials resources in a coordinated fraction to be used in the development of the community in term of project execution or implementation.

Community development means territorial formal social system with intimacy and share common social, economical and cultural characteristics. It is also a population living with legally established where people have some social, economic and cultural features in common which enable them to pursue a common goal.

Development in its own dimension means different things to different people, some people take it to be change, other take it as advancement improvement and progress while some scholars regard it as modernization or westernization, in other words, development means continues process of positive change in the quality and span of people.

What is meant by change are:

1. Ability to feed, clothe and shelter one resulting from one income from one occupation and from provision of infrastructural facilities like, road, water, electricity, the telecommunication and implement in another factor of production.
2. Ability to live longer as a result of provision of health and medical facilities.
3. Ability to read, write and to understand forces surrounding through provision of formal and informal education.

1.1   INTRODUCTION

          The study of the roles of local government in community development gives us an insight towards the details knowledge and understanding has local government operate as the third tiers of government anywhere in the world.

          Also the study made us to understand that the impact and contribution of government whether of federal or state level toward the development and effective administration of local government and its roles in community development. More also it made us to understand the multipurpose feature of local government in terms of carrying socio-economic services in the local areas, thereby stimulating and encouraging local initiative in community work, promoting the democratic process, saving as training ground for nation political leaders, serving as medium of communication between the people and higher tiers of government.

1.2   STATEMENT OF PROBLEM

          Some of the problem affecting the role of local government and community development are:

1. Planning without implementation and implementation without planning of programme.
2. People are not very clear about the nation and the community development programmes. This usually leads to lack of community to the part of the people. It is more of governmental programme than that of the people.
3.   Lack of proper plan monitoring and evaluation, hence there

 is no systematic way of determining programme accomplishment facilitating effectiveness and efficiency.

1. Insufficient resources, many community development projects suffer from shortage of resources and in i.e human and for material resources.
2. Top down planning in which few top administrative offices make division on community development programme planning and pass it down for implementation.
3. Problem of coordination: This usually results in role conflict for example a change agent is expected to fulfill the desire of the sponsoring agency rather than what he consider appropriate to the community. i.e the use of contraceptive for birth control.
4. Poor statistical base for effective planning.
5. Inadequate understanding of the community such as it structure of influence, communication and decision making pattern.