THE SEARCH FOR PUBLIC ACCOUNTABILITY IN LOCAL GOVERNMENT COUNCILS: : A CASE STUDY OF NSUKKA LOCAL GOVERNMENT 1980 - 1993

One of the main problems of Local government councils in contemporary Nigeria is lack of public accountability. So common is this problem at the level of national government, too, that it bas occupied the attention of many political analysts. At the level of Local government, however, where the incidence of politiëal corruption is endemic, little attention has been paid to the problem of political corruption and its converse, public accountability. This work is motivated by the desire to fill this gap in the literature. The title of the work is "The Search for Public Accountability in Local Government Councils: A Case Study of Nsukka Local Government, 1980 - 199311• The objective is to inquire into the level of public accountability in Nigeria and identify the factors responsible for the low (or high) level of public accountability in Local Government Councils in Nigeria. ii Using the systems approach, we focused on the checks and balances, expressed in the form of financial rules and procedures, as in-put and public accountability as out-put in identifying the intra-gove·rnmental factors that determine the level of public accountability in Local
government Councils. To gather empirical evidence for the work, we used the survey research method. We designed and administered questionnaires to