CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

Background to the Study

The government at the centre becomes meaningful to the people if the activities of local government councils touch the citizens in a positive way.  Local government is the closest unit of the three tiers of government to the people.  Historically, development planning in Nigeria dates back to 1946, after the Second World War.  This began with the British Ten-Year Development and Welfare for Nigeria, 1946-1956.1  The Ten-Year Plan and its successor, the Five-Year Plan (1956-1960) did little to improve a lot of the Nigerian rural dwellers.2  The rural areas were denied social services that were essential for rural development.  The bulk of the social services went to the cities where the British administrators and “experts” lived.3

1

Although underdevelopment of the colonies, including Nigeria, is the view commonly shared by scholars such as Walter Rodney, Dupe Olatusun and T. Beinberg, it may be pertinent to state here that there was some semblance of development in some areas of colonial Africa.  This semblance can be illustrated by the theory of unintended consequences by Prof. Ali Mazru who used the theory to explain rural development efforts made by colonial authorities.  In the Eastern Region of Nigeria, for instance, the colonial government did set up a “democratic” local government system under the Eastern Region Local Government Ordinance of 1950 for development at the grassroots.

At independence, propelled by the quest for nation-building and the influence of the agriculture, Nigerian leaders set out a development plan.  During this period, development tended to be urban centred to the detriment of the rural areas.  The rural areas of the country, the dwelling place of over 70% of the population, did not catch the fancy of the national development policy-makers and policy implementers.  Also, the strategic position of rural Nigeria as the source of the nation’s staple food and industrial raw materials; its prime lands; its advantages in terms of better environmental quality; home of tourist sites and the overall relationship with the urban areas did not attract the attention of national development policy-makers.

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