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Original research
DECENTRALISATION AND LOCAL GOVERNMENT AUTONOMY IN NIGERIA: CHALLENGES, PROSPECTS, AND IMPLICATIONS FOR GRASSROOTS DEVELOPMENTPages 93-100 Abstract
Decentralization has been one of the most advanced notions of ameliorating governance, transparency and inclusive growth in the globe. The paper has explained the split problem of decentralization and autonomy of the local governments in Nigeria considering issues that underlie the problem and how the problem can be leveraged to spur development at the grassroots level. The research process is historical and documentary because it is devoted to the development of the local government organizations Secondary data was gathered using the sources related to the government publications, policy documents, scholarly works, and journal articles and evaluated with the help of content analysis. The research was based on the Decentralization Theory that asserts that decentralization of power to the lower levels of government would lead to more service delivery to the population and civic involvement; they found out that the local autonomy of the government is highly impaired by the big intrusions by the state, the dependence of financial resources and institutional inefficiencies despite the existence of the concept of decentralization in the constitution that created the country. These limits have highly limited the ability of the local governments to guarantee the ground development. The paper has made a conclusion that decentralization and fiscal autonomy is a real phenomenon that is needed to achieve good local governance and sustainable rural development. It also proposes constitutional change, institutional fortification, and reinforcement of the local capacity, as the key measures of empowering the local governments in Nigeria.
Keywords: Decentralization, autonomy, grassroots development, issues, opportunities.
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Anshul Jain, 
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