Local Government: Effective Tool for Socio-Political and Economic Development in the South-East

Local government (LG) is an extension of government from the central to the local communities. Significantly, the instrumentality of local government in the sustainability of the socio-political and economic development of a state is considered very essential. Local government is purposefully established to promote development owing to its closeness to the people at the grassroots level, therefore, enhancing its ability to easily articulate and aggregate the socio-political and economic demands of the people. The basic thrust of this paper is to x-ray local government as an effective tool for the socio-political and economic development of the southeast. The paper utilized the secondary method of data collection and adopted descriptive analysis. It further adopted the Administrative decentralization theory. It was established in the literature that local government is a political/administrative therapy for sustainable rural development in the southeast but has failed owing to some socio-political and economic factors, ranging from corruption, bad leadership etc. The paper found that the existence of local government has been recognized as fundamental to the rapid socio- political and economic transformation of localities where national/state governments may not be able