Improving Human Resource Capacity in the Nigerian Local Government Administration: Challenges and Prospects Olanrewaju Oyedele Samuel Senior Lecturer, PhD, Department of Public Administration, Faculty of Management Sciences, University of Ilorin, Ilorin, Kwara, Nigeria. Email id: samolaoyedele@gmail.com Online published on 2 May, 2019. Abstract Local government administration is at the lowest, yet most critical level of government in a ruraldominated federation such as Nigeria. It is critical to rural and ultimately to national development if properly managed. However, local governments in Nigeria have been incapacitated to function effectively over the years. One of the age-long problems of this important level of government is the ineffective use and development of the human resource of local governments. This is why local government personnel are often perceived as inefficient, inexperienced, unqualified, unskilled and incompetent in the performance of their duties. It is, therefore, recommended in this paper that for local governments to become vibrant and perform their responsibilities to expected standard, the process of their recruitment, training and promotion of their personnel should be strictly in line with merit, staff development and sound personnel management practices. Top Keywords Autonomy, Constitution, Human resource capacity, Local government administration, National development, Personnel management practices, Service delivery. Top |