CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1 GENERAL BACKGROUND TO THE STUDY

Local government exists to fill the gap, which the national government is too remote to fill. This means that local governments complement and extends the national government. It has been recognized as one important instrument for economic development, rural development and for the delivery of social services development at the grassroots level. It is therefore charged with the outrageous problem of poverty and its alleviation. In Nigeria, local government as the third tier of government nearest to the people has been recognized as an institution capable of transforming the rural area. Consequently, there have been continuous attempts to create new local governments or restructuring the existing ones in the country with the objective of utilizing them as fulcrums for achieving economic development through series of programs which poverty alleviation is basically part of. There has been an increasing upsurge of interest in the literature of development administration and in planning circles on the positive role local government play in poverty alleviation. The emphasis is in terms of using local government as a strategic instrument for fostering, promoting and implementing economic development projects for alleviating poverty. Absolute poverty has to do with living below whatever is defined as the poverty line based on per capita income or consumption of individuals or households in a country. Successive governments have pursued different policy initiatives with a view to mitigating the problem. In spite of large scale investment committed to poverty alleviation programmes, >50% of Nigerians still live in relative poverty with over a third of the population languishing in extreme poverty. The local government system is set up, at least in part, to help curtail the prevalence of poverty. The paper is aimed at an evaluation of to what extent this objective is being pursued and addressed by Nigerian local governments using some selected Local Governments in Osun State as case studies. People in Nigeria like others in other sub – Saharan Africa and South Asia remain the poorest in the world. In 1992 between 45 and 50% of the approximately 525 million people in sub-Saharan Africa (Nigeria inclusive) were estimated to be living below poverty line.

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