Legitimated Local Political Leadership and SDGs Attainment in Africa: Can the Latter Materialize without the Former Using Nigerian Context to Exemplify?

The paper hypothesizes that the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is not realizable in Africa if local political leaders lack legitimacy. It utilizes document analysis, a qualitative derived data collection and analysis instrument. It examines the mannerisms of Nigeria's local-grassroots democracy to exemplify occurrences constituting contradictions to objectifying SDGs localization and nationalization in Africa. Based on Powell's (1982) schematic features of credible electoral democracy, the paper demonstrates that SDGs attainment generally is impossible in Africa - using the Nigerian context - wherein illegitimate local political leaders reign. The Nigerian context depicts a situation whereby local leaders do not owe political accountability to the local electorates but to state-based political elites. Powell's (1982) theoretical supposition give credence to how illegitimate local politico-democratic practices in Nigeria prompts illegitimate local political leaders. Such leaders typically constitute bane to the realization first and foremost of SDG localization, and ultimately SGDs nationalization. It articulates these propositions to show why the SGDs optimization eludes Nigeria viz. Africa: (i) occurrence, persistence, and pervasiveness of local leaders deficient of political legitimacy (i.e. absence of local political autonomy), (ii) continuing prominence and application of top-down development theory (i.e. political centralization over decentralization), and (iii) continuing and overt contempt by state-based political elites for the rationale that local election cum grassroots politics are a sound facilitator of democracy and enhancers of national democratization. It concludes that entrenching the SDGs in Nigeria viz. Africa is predicated on embedding legitimated local political leaders and thereby suggests lessons for Africa.