CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background of the Study
The last three decades have witnessed unprecedented global transformation occasioned by a chain of innovations and paradigm shifts like liberalization, privatization etc, with enhanced Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) serving as the major catalysing factor (Achimugu et al, 2013).
The emergence of information communication technologies has brought a lot of changes to the way things are done in the world over. These changes are across the spectrum; the way private companies do business, the way universities do things, the way governments provide services to their citizens and the way they interact with stakeholders at large (Nkwe, 2012).
The world over, there has been a paradigm shift where governments have realized the importance of Electronic Government (otherwise known as e-government) as a strong tool for public-sector reform in search of excellence. Governments have understood and appreciated the contribution of e-government to the government agenda in contrast to the traditional paper-and-file approaches often adopted in managing businesses. The Republic of Uganda, for instance, has a strong belief that ICT has the potential not only to revolutionize the way government operates, but also to enhance the relationship between government to business (G2B), government to government (G2G) and within government to citizen (G2C).
It is in keeping with this line of thought that (UNPAN, 2005) observes that almost all governments in the world have embraced one form of e-government or another (Ifinedo, 2008). Is however of the opinion that a majority of African countries are just beginning to understand the importance of such a concept in governance. Hence, a very poor e-government ranking. Nigeria has an e-government index ranking of 0.243 as against the world average of 0.414, meaning it is yet to be positioned to harness the limitless opportunities available in e-government to reinvent governance at all levels (Achimugu et al., 2013).
E-governance, which is a paradigm shift over the traditional approaches in Public Administration, means rendering of government services and information to the public using electronic means. This new paradigm has brought about a revolution in the quality of service delivered to the citizens. It has ushered in transparency in the governing process; saving of time due to provision of services through single window; simplification of procedures; better office and record management; reduction in corruption; and improved attitude, behaviour and job handling capacity of the dealing personnel in the developed countries (Monga, cited in Nkwe, 2012).
Revenue generation in Nigeria has been one of the topical issues in recent times especially with the drastically and phenomenal shift from agriculture to crude oil exportation. The occasional dwindle in the price of crude oil and the various predictions of the running out of oil wells in Nigeria in the near future time has rekindled government interest in agriculture and other non-oil sources of revenue to the country and its constituent states with their local government areas to reconsider their internal revenue generation (Nnanseh and Akpan, 2013).
The emphasis has always been on how to boost internally generated revenues (IGR) so as to be less reliance on oil and other statutory allocations to states and the local government areas. Besides, it has been a popular believes that a state with strong internally generated revenue can cater for the social and infrastructural needs of its citizens (Nnanseh and Akpan, 2013).
Whether in fact the use of e-government affects internally generated revenues as well as transparency and accountability in states and local government administrations in Nigeria positively or negatively in practice, is an empirical question that remains open. The undertaking of this study will therefore explore the effect of E-government on Internally Generated Revenues with a special reference to Egbe/Idimu Local Council Development Area (LCGA).
1.2 Statement of the Problem
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