Intergovernmental Fiscal Relations, Local Government Financial Autonomy and Service Delivery: A Focus on Okitipupa Local Government Area of Ondo State, Nigeria

Abstract

This paper examined the relationship between intergovernmental fiscal relations and service delivery in the context of financial autonomy in Okitipupa Local government area of Ondo State. It is within this prism that effort was delved at exploring the extent to which Nigeria local governments perform constitutional responsibilities to the people at the grassroot level and the attendant yearning for financial autonomy. In examining this, the work dwells on Efficiency-Services theoretical escapade and adopted both primary and secondary sources of data collection for robust discussion with descriptive survey research design. The finding of this study revealed among others that there is a correlation between local government financial autonomy, primary education and primary health services delivery in Okitipupa local government area of Ondo State. Based on the findings, it was concluded that poor service delivery in the Nigerian local areas is as a result of the financial yoke that local governments bear with the attendant State Joint Local Government Account in practice in the country. The paper therefore recommended among others that local government should be given more autonomy to generate, allocate and utilize its funds in line with the peculiar needs and aspirations of the people at the grassroots level, complete scrapping of State Joint Local Government Account, scrapping of caretaker committees among others.