Pages: 62-72

Abstract

This study examines the relationship among elitism, local governance and development in Nigeria. The general objective of the study therefore is to examine the effect of elitism on local governance and development in the country. The theoretical framework of the study is the elite theory. Relying on secondary sources of data for analyses therefore, the work adopts logical argumentation as methodology. Local governance is operationalized in the study as what local governments do. Hence, the paper is additionally an interrogation of the local government tendencies in the Nigerian nation state. The relationship among the three variables (elitism, local governance and development in Nigeria) was indeed found to be debilitating. The occasioning incapacities accordingly, accentuated the effect of the sapping scenario of poverty and underdevelopment in the rural local government areas of the country (in particular). On the way forward, the study recommends an urgent purging of local governance in the country, of all the encumbering elitist seizures, beginning with the promotion of what the paper underscores as egalitarian gender tolerance.