ABSTRACT
The Problem of poor and inadequate social amenities at the local government areas has made some people to call for their scrapping. But these local governments often complain of inadequate revenue. This study assessed revenue available to Borgu and Mokwa local government areas of Niger state and the social amenities they provided between 2007 and 2011.
This is done in order to ascertain their internal and external revenue, social amenities provided and to establish relationships between the variables. To do this, data were collected through primary and secondary sources and were analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistical methods. The descriptive method used is percentage while figure and tables were used to present data.
The inferential method was carried out using a non- parametric statistical tool (Spearman Correlation) with the aid of a Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS). Secondary data on Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) and the amount of statutory allocations from Federation Account accessed through the State Joint Local Governments Account (SJLA) were the independent variables.
The dependent variable was the provision of social amenities represented by capital expenditure (C.E). The hypotheses were tested and outputs of the correlation revealed a perfect, positive and strong relationship between IGR and Provision of social amenities in the local governments. It also showed a strong relationship between the accessed statutory allocations and provision of social amenities.
Our findings revealed that, the local governments IGR were poor and the social amenities provided by them were few compared to revenue expended especially in Borgu Local Government. Mokwa Local Government expended meager of its available revenue on provision of social amenities. The study also revealed that, the Local Governments accessed little of their due external revenue from Federation Account from the State Joint Local Government Account (SJLA).
We concluded that, for the Local Governments to provide more social amenities, more IGR must be generated and more of their external revenue from Federation Account must be accessed from the State Joint Local Government Account. We therefore, recommend that, Local Governments must use available revenue in such away that, more of it is used to provide social amenities which will help to improve their poor IGR. And effort should be made to enable Local Governments access their allocations from Federation Account directly while State governments supervise their spending.
