REVENUE GENERATION IN LOCAL GOVERNMENT AREAS: PROBLEMS AND PROSPECT (A STUDY OF OWERRI WEST LOCAL GOVERNMENT AREA)

Revenue generation is the basis and the pathway to recent improvement. The study investigated the revenue generation in local government areas: problems and prospect. This is because local government as the third tier of government and the closest to the people especially in the rural areas needed revenue to provide basic social amenities to the people. But it is unfortunate to note that the local government management has not lived up to expectation especially to provide basic social amenities to the rural people. Thus, the objective of the research is to analyze the extent to which problems revenue generation had affected the local government of those areas. The researcher used primary and secondary methods of data collection to generate the needed data. The data obtained through questionnaire was presented in tables and expressed in simple percentages. The following were some of the findings which include the problems associated with revenue generation in local government, lack of basic social amenities to the rural people and lack of revenue to maintain the existing infrastructures. The researcher therefore recommended that the local government should provided basic amenities of high quality. By doing so, the people's interest would be geared towards giving their maximum support to the local government which would lead to the improvement of the local government area of Owerri West LGA.