LOCAL GOVERNMENT SYSTEM IN NIGERIA AS AN INSTRUMENT FOR RURAL DEVELOPMENT
ABSTRACT
The topic local government system as an instrument for rural development is to assess the preference of Nigeria local government systems in the area of rural development.
To explain why local governments have been ineffective.
To recommend a fundamental solution towards making local government rural development oriented.
To achieve the above tasks, the paper is divided into six parts. Parts one clarifies the concepts of local government and rural development. Part two deals with local government and rural development in the pre-colonial Nigeria. An assessment of local government and rural development in the colonial era is done in part three. While in part four, the role of local government in rural development in post colonial Nigeria is examined, part five explains the ineffectiveness of Nigerian local governments, and findly in part will I suggest a fundamental solution to the problem of local government in Nigeria.
CHAPTER ONE
1.0 INTRODUCTION
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 rural development.
In Nigeria, local government as the tie 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 rural development is understandable for, according to guy Henter: 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 don most to slow the migration to major cities … finally, it is there that some redress of gross inequality in income distribution can be started.
1.1 GENERAL BACKGROUND TO THE SUBJECT MATTER
With the formal colonization of Nigeria in 1900. the integration of the country into the world capitalist system this completed. The imperatives of economic exploitation and political domination resulted in the establishment of institutions and organizations quite alien and in most cases in opposition to the existing indigenous ones. This becomes necessary in order to forestall any frustration of the colonial policies.
It is within this context that we can understand the origin of the “indirect rule” system which was a system of local government introduced by the British. Essentially, indirect rule was a system of government in which the British government ruled Nigeria through the native institutions and authorities which they recognized and regarded as an integrate part of the machinery of government. The colonialists transformed “constitutional” monarchs of the pre-colonial era into native tyrants known as ‘native authorities’.
Indirect, rule, therefore, minimized the physical visibility of the alien exploit substituting in his tread, the local chief or “ruler” whose hitherto precarious political power within the pre-colonials setting was enhanced in his new role as the bridgehead between the “conquered” natives and the imperial conqueror.
