Abstract
Local governments as a bureaucratic institution are constitutionally created to bring government closer to the people and to drive grassroots development through provision of basic services, infrastructure and local planning. Despite this, local government autonomy has not yielded expected result as a result of the problem of fiscal federalism. So, the specific purpose of this research was to examine the effect of local government autonomy on the availability of funds for development initiatives in Bayelsa and Delta States. The study was established through survey research design and combination of elite theory and cancerous democratic theory. The population for this study (17,044) included the residents of local government areas in both Delta and Bayelsa States. Taro Yamane formula for sample size was used to arrive at 381from whence 376 became the sample that produce the study. The ANOVA results (F = 0.028, p = 0.883) and the p-value for the autonomy variable (p = 0.883) indicate that the model is not statistically significant. Thus, we found that local government autonomy has no significant effect on the availability of funds for development initiatives in Bayelsa and Delta States. In conclusion, it is clear that despite some level of independence, local governments remain financially constrained due to overreliance on federal and state allocations, bureaucratic bottlenecks, and weak internal revenue structures. This suggests that autonomy alone is insufficient to guarantee adequate funding for development projects. The study recommended that there is need for reforming the disbursement process and strengthening internal revenue generation to carter for local needs in Bayelsa and Delta States.