The Local government areas remain the tier of government that is closest to the citizen. Despite their closeness and development relevance to the grassroots, their social development reach still remains unfelt. the LGAs receives huge sum of funds through monthly federal allocation and also through Internally generated funds, yet the local government remains the poorest in terms of project implementation that addresses social welfare challenges. The open LGA Project core focus is to promote  transparency , accountability and good governance in the 774 local government areas as well as driving citizens to become more participatory and responsive to governance and leadership in the local government areas. The project works on establishing collaboration between DEAN and the Local government councils which will develop the capacity of the area councils administration to leverage on available technology to engage citizens on interventions projects which are been implemented through the local government. Also using available technology, the local government can publish budgets and effectively engage citizens on issues of governance.  addresses the lack of accountability and transparency which exists in our Local Government Areas with the aim to drive citizens  to demand accountability from the local government councils and also ensure citizens become active and participatory in governance. To these LGAs remains unchecked despite their closeness and development relevance to the grassroots, they have continued to receive huge sum of funds as monthly allocation from the federal government and as well generating unaccountable internally generated revenue. The revenue allocation formula set apart 20.60% of federal revenue for local government as monthly federal allocation; for instance between May 1999 to June 2017 the six LGAs in FCT, Abuja had received over N228 billion. This is too much money not to be accounted for. In 2018, the state and the local government jointly shared N4.5 trillion from the federal allocation .Unfortunately, this amount of money only appear on the pages of news and dailies for citizen to see with no particular accountability structure for the citizen to participate in their tracking.

Our national survey that revealed only 3 LGAs with website presence out of the 774 LGAs in Nigeria. Only one of these 3 present on twitter and only one LGA chairman was traceable on twitter. As at that time, no LGA in Nigeria has their annual budget in the public and non has for once made public what they generate in IGR or what they receive as allocation. They operate in total darkness. Our experience on the project revealed among other things that Institutional Weakness, Intentional Opaque Budget System and Lack of Interest from Citizens all together have contributed largely to the overall governance gap created in public governance most especially in the Local Government Areas as they have consistently refused to share their financial records for citizens to assess. Local Government Accountability/Open LGAs Compliance Award is part of DEAN’s strategic short term plan to promote transparency, accountability, citizen participation and responsiveness to citizens among the Local Government level of governance in Nigeria using the Area Councils in FCT as a pilot scheme.