E-Govemance and E- Participation: Panaceas for Effective Mobilization of Manpower and Resources in Selected Local Governments in Ogun State.

E-governance and e-participation are important stages in the advancement of government processes. They both offer great opportunities as well as new challenges despite the opportunities they offer; they also introduce new challenges especially in Nigeria with emphasis on selected local governments in Ogun State. Egovernance is a new phenomenon in African countries and Nigeria is fast aligning into it, with the aim of addressing many challenges attached to development in Nigeria. AdoOdo/ Ota, Sagamu, Yewa South, Abeokuta South and Ijebu Ode local governments function primarily along the traditional colonial administrative system. Features of this system are bureaucracy, nepotism top-bottom chain command structure, et cetera. Hence, problems of this age long governance are legion which e-governance presumably appears to solve. Under a full-fledged e-governance, system optimization of resources is paramount. Despite all known benefits of e-governance, many challenges are embedded in the system. Changes are often hindered, due to lack of confidence in the process and there is the perceived displacement of personnel through application of information communication technology (ICT). This study considers sectoral aggregation of local government systems such as personnel, community development or relations, Infrastructural needs, spatial environment, etc. Structured and unstructured interviews will be conducted and questionnaires were administered in order to gather data in areas of education, health, recreation, electricity, water supply, empowerment, waste management, traffic control and security. This study specifically evaluated the personnel's understanding of ICT application in governance and community or public participation and exercise of civic responsibility. The research design utilized both descriptive and survey approach in its method of data collection. In order to realize the objectives of the current study, the method of data analysis involved both descriptive analysis with the use of frequencies and percentage distributions in analyzing the basic information of the targeted audience. The formulated hypotheses were subjected to statistical validation using multivariate regression analysis. This methodological approach enabled us ascertain whether there exists any significance relationship between eGovernance and effective mobilization of manpower and resources considering the selected local government areas for this study. Judgmental sampling procedure wer