1.1 BACKGROUND TO THE STUDY
Democracy in its true meaning is synonymous with grassroots democracy. Grassroots democracy is a people/community – driven participation in elections, governance and decision making. Grassroots democracy can be seen as a tendency towards designing political processes where as much decision making authority as practical is shifted to the lowest level of organization. Thus, a local government is a government at the grassroots level of administration meant for meeting peculiar grassroots need of the people (Agagu, 1997).
Appadorai (1975) also defined the local government system as government by the popularly elected bodies charged with administrative and executive duties in matters concerning the inhabitants of a particular district or place. Local government was further defined by Lawal (2000) as that tier of government closest to the people, “which is vested with certain powers to exercise control over the affairs of people in its domain”.
Local government is a system of public administration at a local level, charged with the responsibility of bringing the people at the grassroots closer to the government. The local government authorities in Nigeria operate in an atmosphere in which for reasons of high level of illiteracy, general despondency, and political disenchantment, their activities are somehow remote from media scrutiny and the watchful eYDS of non-governmental organizations (Jega 2011).
The situation is further worsened by the constitution of the federal republic of Nigeria which places the local government authorities under the crippling and domineering influence of the state governments that are only willing to concede limited autonomy to this tier of government. Thus, the Nigerian Local Government system which is the third tier of government has no interactive links with the community for which it was designed and created. This has made so many people to wonder if there is grassroots democracy in Nigeria. Though the government is located at the local level, it is run by elites who are alienated from the culture of the people (Akinola 2006). Thus the local government and the communities that ought to be partners in progress have been operating at parallel lines. This has resulted in the poor performance of the local government over the years in grassroots development. There have been several reforms over the years by the Federal Government of Nigeria aimed at stimulating self government and to encourage initiative and leadership potential at the grassroots level. The Federal government hopes that these reforms will further enshrine the principle of participatory democracy and political responsibility among all Nigerians, especially at the grassroots level (Usman 2010).
The hope of the Federal government for rapid youth development at the grassroots have become a mirage as successive local government councils have grossly under-perform in almost all areas of their mandate including youth development. Corruption is at the rooftop as politicians and government officials display their ill-gotten wealth in flagrant opulence.
1.2 STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM
This study is examining the relationship between grassroots democracy and youth development in Local government administration. Youth development according to UN (1971) is the qualitative changes which are brought about within the youth populations. Youth development deals with details of the process of improving the livelihood conditions of youths in such a way as to bridge the gap between youth from affluent background and ones from poorer background. Diejemaoh (1973) defined youth development as a process of not only increasing the level of per capita income of youths, but also the improvement in the quality of life of the youths measured by education, food and nutritional level, health, recreation and security. This study will examine how local government administration has used the instrument of grassroots democracy in the process of youth development.
1.3 RESEARCH QUESTIONS
1.4 PURPOSE OF THE STUDY
The following are the objectives of this study:
To examine the level of grassroots politics being practiced by local government administration.
To find out if grassroots democracy has translated to youth development in local government administration.
To determine the method by which grassroots democracy and youth development can be entrenched in local government administration.
1.5 SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY
The following are the significance of this study:
The results from this study will educate the local government leaders and the general public on the benefits of grassroots democracy and youth development in local government administration.
This research will be a contribution to the body of literature in the area of the effect of personality trait on student’s academic performance, thereby constituting the empirical literature for future research in the subject area.
1.6 SCOPE OF THE STUDY
This study will cover youth development and grassroots democracy in Anambra state using Aguata Local government as the study.
1.7 LIMITATION OF THE STUDY
In the course of writing and carrying out this project work, the research encountered many difficulties; some errors in the results of the research and from external sources of data collection. These are factors standing as constraints thereby limiting the effect of the research result.
Among these are, time finance , scope and use of wrong statistics in data analysis, due to time limit, the research work is a time consuming one. A lot of time is taken to observe the subjects.
Most times the behaviour of the staff changes even when they are aware that they are being observed by the researcher, this is by taking their behavior. The researcher also observed that these senior staff some time give true and false information in order to cover their branches.
At sometime the research work lasted over two months due to large scope of area of the study.
1.9 Operationization/Definition of Terms
For the purpose of clarity, the concepts of politics, Women participation and power will be used interchangeably in the discourse
Youths: This is a young people living in a community that needed to be equipped and trained by the government not because they are the future of the country.
Development: Development is a multi – dimensional process involving a re-organizational and reorientation of the entire economic and social system, in addition to improve income and outcome. Its typically involves radical changes in institutional, social as well popular attitude and sometimes even customs and belief.
Local government: This is government at a local level exercised through representative councils established by laws toe exercise specific functions with in a defined area.
Development: This is a system of generating and initiating a program that will encourage the skill and also knowledge of youths in the country.
Council: This refers to the organ that constitute representation of people either elected or nominated.
Social Economic Development: This is a combination of social and economic development. It embraces improvement in not only standard of living and per-capital income, but also high level of employment, reducing inflation, adequate food, high infrastructures, stressing values rather than achievement.
Democratic: is the process by which a new democracy matures, in a way that means it is unlikely to revert to authoritarianism without an external shock. The notion is contested because it is not clear that there is anything substantive that happens to new democracies that secures their continuation beyond those factors that simply make it ‘more likely’ that they continue as democracies.
Unemployment: This is a situation of not being doing anything for a living. It involves the situation of youth not engaging in any pay activity that will help in making a living.
Employment: It is a situation of engaging in something for making a living and it must be a pay activities.
1.9 Organization of the Study
This research work is organized in five chapters, for easy understanding, as follows. Chapter one is concern with the introduction, which consist of the (background of the study), statement of the problem, purpose of the study, research questions, significance of the study, scope of the study etc. Chapter two being the review of the related literature presents the theoretical framework, conceptual framework and other areas concerning the subject matter. Chapter three is a research methodology covers deals on the research design, area of the study, population of the study, sample and sampling techniques, methods of data collection, instruments for data collection, reliability of the instruments, validity of the instruments, distribution and retrieval of instruments and methods of data analysis. Chapter four concentrate on the data collection and analysis and presentation of finding. Chapter five gives summary, conclusion, and recommendations made of the study