Local Government Administration and Rural Development in Enugu State, Nigeria (2007-2015)

Abstract

This study examined Local Government Administration and Rural Development in Enugu State, Nigeria under Sullivan I. Chime’s administration, 2007-2015. The source of information for this study is secondary source. Three research questions and three objectives guided this study. The general objective of the study is the relationship between the local government administration and rural development in Enugu State, Nigeria. The specific objectives were: to assess the role of the local government administration in rural development in Enugu State, to investigate whether job creation and provision of infrastructures by the government led to decline in rural-urban migration and to find out the relationship between governments budgetary allocation and rural development in Enugu State. Giving the descriptive and argumentative nature of the paper, qualitative method of data gathering and analysis were adopted in the conduct of the research. The method of data presentation and analysis adopted for this study is the content analytical method. Some findings of the study include that Enugu State worked aggressively and assiduously to achieve developmental projects in different communities towards improving the standard of living. The state also came up with different initiatives/programmes like Visit Every Community (VEC), Free Maternal Child Healthcare (FMCH), Free Basic Education Policy and Songhai Initiative for the development of the state, and it was discovered that government budgetary allocations actually affected the overall development of the rural communities over limited resources. As a result of the above findings, the study made some recommendations which include among others; the roles played by the local governments can be said to be very successful. Though, there is need for the government to increase their function capacity of these projects and programmes to be able to cover every area of the state. Local government needs to diversify their internal revenue sources by engaging in some business ventures like filling stations, transportation, and so on, to be able to compliment the poor budgetary allocation given to them by the federal and state government.