Abstract:
There has been an increasing clamour for scraping of the Local Governments since they have failed in their duties as means of bringing development to the rural areas. As a result of negligence on the part of the local government in developing the community, the local people have resorted to self-help development. The study examined whether age-grades have fostered development in Nkanu East Local Government Area or whether lack of funds hinders them from contributing effectively to rural development. Moreover, the research adopted survey method using self-report technique like questionnaire while quantitative method of simple percentage system was used in analyzing the data. Structural Functional theory was used as our theoretical framework. Nevertheless, the work discovered the following: 1. that age-grades have fostered development in Nkanu East Local Government and 2. that lack of funds hindered the age-grades from contributing effectively to rural development. Based on the above findings, the work recommended that there should be adequate participation by the local people in community development.
