SOURCES AND APPLICATION OF FUNDS IN LOCAL GOVERNMENT COUNCIL AND SERVICES DELIVERY(A STUDY OF UKWANI LOCAL GOVERNMENT COUNCIL DELTA STATE)

This research entitled “Sources and Application of funds in Local Government Council and service delivery. A study of Ukwani Local Government Council, Delta State” was carried out to discuss and highlight the sources, utilization of revenue in the services delivery to the people. The statement of the problem was on the complaints against local government that they do not perform the functions to the people, like taking care of trunk C road, providing basic health services maintenance of markets in the area in spite of collecting rate from the traders, and so on. The question there is why has local government perform below the expectation of this public? Is this linked to poor funding / lean sources of revenue or misappropriation / misapplication of available resources? Two hypotheses were formulated for the study; one on adequacy of sources of revenue for service delivery; and the other on the utilization of revenue and service deliver. Two hundred employees of the local government council were drawn from the five department of the local government council using stratified and simple random sampling method. It was found that the local government council has adequate source of revenue that will enable them execute social services to the people and what the people are willing to pay appropriate taxes and rates, but inadequate personnel to ensure effective mobilization of this internal revenue is found to be a problem. It was equally found. That the local government council does not adopt bidding of contracts and that greater part of the council revenue are spent on payment of salaries and seminars with the execution of capital projects which is service delivery related given a very small proportion. It was recommended that the local government council should employ adequate personnel for effective collection of its internally generated Revenue: and introduce bidding into the process of contract award. Also is the need to give adequate attention to provision of service delivery to the people.