Personnel Management and the Challenges of Local Government in Nigeria: Issues and Prospects

Abstract The gains and losses of any organization is a function of the human resources that pilot the affairs of such organization. The onuses as to how an organization thrives are at their whims and caprices; they constitute the greatest assets of any organization. The supply of labour, technical and professional skills, which are germane for effective and efficient planning and implementation of development policies, programmes, projects and daily activities are their sole responsibility. Very instructively, personnel administration relates to the overall organizations planning process by which the organization tries to ensure that it has the right number of persons and the right kind of people, at the right time and at the right place performing functions, which are economically useful and which satisfy the needs of the organization and provide satisfaction to the individual involved. This study interrogates the challenges of development of local government in Nigeria from the purview of personnel management. The work examines recruitment process into local authority, statutory provisions for training and retraining, staffing, amongst others, as it based its theory on decentralized development as framework of analysis.  It concludes that local government personnel management is frost with nonchalance, poor staffing and challenges of re-entrants of trainees.