English

Abstract

The essence of government and administration at local levels is to ensure effective service delivery to the people at the grassroots. By constitutional designs and norms, governance at this level draws more closely to the needs of the people. Effective dispensation of this responsibility depends largely on the capability, knowledge and expertise of the existing institutional actors and structures. Nevertheless, service delivery at this level of government in Nigeria is highly deficient because of the low capacity of staff. Studies have shown that there is a close link between staff development, capacity building and efficient service delivery. Capacity building through training, seminars and workshops usually helps to ensure that local government workers possess the right knowledge and skills that equip them to take on new responsibilities, and adapt to changing conditions. Data for this paper were obtained from the primary and secondary sources. For the primary data, quantitative and qualitative methods were used. A total of one hundred and ten (110) respondents were selected for the quantitative data, while other seven (7) respondents were interviewed. Data from secondary sources like books, journals, newspapers/magazine and internet complement the primary data. Chi square (X2) was adopted to test the hypothesis at 0.05 level of significance, while content analysis was adopted for test of qualitative data. The result accepted the null hypothesis and rejected the alternate hypothesis. The acceptance revealed that staff training or their capacity building does not at all times translate to efficient service delivery in Ife-East Local Government Area. It was found that in spite of reforms in the training curriculum for manpower development and huge funding of local governments in this dispensation, majority of their staff are rarely trained and their performance in efficient service delivery is abysmal failure. The paper concluded that local governments should commit their efforts to building institutional and system capacity that produces the human capital that is committed to efficient service delivery and the principles of good governance. Key words: Manpower, Capacity building, service delivery, local government, development.