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The Administration Of Local Governments And Challenges Of Rural Development
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The issue of funding is a big challenge. Some of the rural development
programmes are so bogus without clearly defined sources of funding. The
cases of the Housing for ALL, Universal Basic Education (UBE) and so on
are clear examples. They are often initiated before sourcing for funds
from philanthropists and international donors which may never come.
Another
challenge is the armed conflicts ranging form ethnic, religious and
communal issues which do not provide enabling environment for the
implementation of sustainable development programmes in such areas. For
instance, a situation where foreigners and government workers in some
coastal rural areas are target of kidnappers demanding ransom is
obviously not conducive for development work.
Also, corruption poses a
very big threat to rural development. There is lack of integrity,
accountability and transparency on the part of people who are supposed
to implement development projects in the rural areas. Nwakoby (2007)
laments that public funds (made for rural projects) are strarched away
in bank vaults in Europe and America, while an overwhelming proportion
of the population live in abject poverty.
Another challenge is the
lack of political will and commitment, policy instability and
insufficient involvement of the intended beneficiaries of the programmes
hence according to Chiliokwu (2006), most of them died with the
government that initiated them. For example, development programmes like
Operation Feed the Nation, Green Revolution, Free and Compulsory
Primary Education, Low cost Housing Schemes which impact positively on
the rural dwellers could not be sustained. Onibokun (1987) sees rural
development to be faced with the paradox that the production oriented
rural economy relies heavily on non-productive people who are well
-equipped with outdated tools, technical information, scientific and
cultural training and whose traditional roles and access to resources
pose problems for their effective incorporation into modern economic
systems, whereas the consumption oriented urban economy is flooded with
people many of who are either unemployed or unemployable or marginally
employed or underemployed in the urban centres where they choose to
live. As a result of this mass exodus, the rural areas have been
qualitatively depopulated and are progressively less attractive for
social and economic investments while the urban areas are becoming
physically congested, socially unhealthy and generally uneconomic to
maintain.
So the study is carried out to examine the administration of local governments and the challenges of rural development.
1.2 STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM
The
key problem facing most local governments is lack of adequate finance
to implement various developmental programmes. It would be recalled that
since early 1990s, there have been tremendous increase in the total
amount of funds available to local governments in Nigeria. The reasons
for the lack of adequate finance can be attributed to the fact that
local government allocations are been hijacked by state governors, used
for electioneering campaigns and shared among political God- fathers and
members of state assemblies. This fact was indicated by the Central
Bank of Nigeria in its economic report for the third quarter of 2011
when it announced that the total receipts by the 774 local government
councils from the federation and VAT pool Accounts for the period of
July, August and September was #493.77billion. The media report of
Monday, December 26, 2011 indicated how allocations to local government
areas were been hijacked by state governors and at times out rightly
diverted to non- existing projects. Also, state governors have used the
joint Account to siphon local government allocations from the federation
account.
Akhabue (2011) pointed out that the last criminal fad was
that state governors redistributed allocations to local government from
the federation account and gave less than #20million to each council to
pay salaries, and take care of their overhead costs. All these
corruptive activities had added in no small measure to the problem of
inadequate finance which has made effective services delivery at the
rural areas to be impossible. This study therefore focuses on the
challenges faced by the local government on rural development.
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