Between Democracy and Leadership in the Development of Local Government in Nigeria’s Fourth Republic

Abstract

This study examines Democracy, Leadership in the development of Local Government in Nigeria’s Fourth Republic. There has been a growing concern over the deplorable conditions of the rural people. Unarguably, the expediency for the creation of local government as the third tier government is to facilitate Development at the grassroots.  However, it is worrisome that the deterioration and overall decline in the quality of service delivery in the local government as a result of unbridled and unpatriotic leadership style adopted by the state governors towards local government administration has unimaginably brought dysfunctional and deficit infrastructure to the Local Government System. The objective of this study is to explore the Nexus between Democracy, leadership in the Development of local government system in Nigeria. The study reviewed extant literature conceptually, theoretically and empirically with the democratic participatory prepositions for its theoretical framework. Methodologically, the study being a non-structured, non-experimental, non-survey, adopted qualitative documentary secondary sources of historical description and explanatory approach for its secondary Data collection. Content analytical technique was utilized for its analysis. Based on the analysis, findings show that abysmal and unpatriotic leadership coupled with the lacuna in the constitution has necessitated the State Governors embarking on unilateral, arbitrary, unlawful joint account and dissolution of democratically elected Government leaders which negatively undermined the affairs of local government administration, and it has given limited, hindered access to the funding of local government for development programmes. Therefore, the study recommends among others, that patriotic leadership, constitutional amendment and devolution of powers that will prevent state Government arbitrarily interference and diversion of local Government funds and full political participation of the citizenry in the third tier government should be strengthened.