THE TRADITIONAL ROLES OF LOCAL GOVERNMENT

THE TRADITIONAL ROLES OF LOCAL GOVERNMENT

Local government all over the world is created to perform two inter-related roles, namely, political and socio-economic. They are set up to promote and entrench democracy at the grass root level and to provide socio-economic services to the people. In other words, local government are created to promote democracy and for service delivery. Within the situations, the 1979 guidelines recognize these roles when it states them in form of indicated here under.

        i.            To facilitate exercise of democratic self-government closes to the level of our and encourages initiate and leadership potentials.

      ii.            To provide a two-way channel of communication between local corn and government both state and federal.

    iii.            To make appropriate services and development activates responsive to local wishes and initiative by developing and delegating them to local representatives' bodies.

   iv.            To mobilize human and material resources through the involvement of members of the public in their local development.

These four aims fall into two broad roles of political and socio-economic, while the first two aims fall into the ambit of the political roles, the last fall with the socio-economic role.

Local government in Nigeria performs both mandatory and concurrent functions. The mandatory functions are those functions which local governments have to perform without necessary assistance from either state or federal.

The concurrent ones shared between the local government and the state and federal government.