Local Government Performance under a Federal System: The Nigerian Experience

This paper examines the local government practice under the federal system of government in Nigeria. It highlights the performance of local government system in Nigeria as a federal entity. It accounts for the circumstances which underline the performance of the local government system in Nigeria and the impact on its efficiency and effectiveness. The secondary method of collecting data has been adopted in this paper and data collected were subjected to further documentary analysis. David Easton’s systems theory is employed as the theoretical framework. The findings reveal that because the practice of federalism in Nigeria has failed to take into account the heterogeneous composition of its peoples, it adopted a uniform system of local government which has failed to make impact on the people within their localities. The paper recommends enthronement of genuine and practical democratic federal cultures across the country and a fundamental review of the laws that created the Nigerian local government system with a view to evolving fewer but stronger local governments that are relatively independent, functional and adapted to meet peculiar local needs.