In its effort to strengthen local government finances, the Association of Local Governments of Nigeria ALGON, has concluded arrangements to host a national summit on municipal credit rating to strengthen local government finances in Nigeria.

Secretary- General of the Common- Wealth Local Government Forum, Mr. Carl Wright together with some local government experts from the UK will join other colleagues from across the country to present papers at the summit between march 17- 20, 2009.

The summit is aimed at informing state and local government stakeholders of the value and uses of municipal credit ratings, noting some of the national issues to be taken into account, and the general procedure that has to be followed to obtain one. It would be recalled that since local governments were created in the 1950's, the only fundamental change in the development of local governments in Nigeria occurred within the 1976 reforms, when for the first time, the country was given a common single tier structure of local government, in place of the different structures of various states.

It was however, noted that although the local governments have been empowered by the constitution to determine, conduct and run local government affairs and more importantly, provide social amenities and develop rural infrastructure, financial resources to them was constrained inspite of their statutory allocations of revenues from the federation account, and for them to achieve the expected sustainable development, fiscal decentralisation must take place along side the administrative decentralisation.

It is in recognition of this problem that ALGON has initiated a national summit on municipal credit rating with the objective of reshaping local government financial strength, and opening up for them access to grants and financial assistance for sustainable development.

From the macro-economic perspective, the outcome of this summit has the value of mobilising local savings and thereby developing the Nigerian domestic financial market.