The effective administration of any society depends largely on the capacity of the leader. Every society must as a matter of fact have a leader either elected or appointed to pilot its affairs. In Nigeria, the grassroots are important as significant percentage of population still reside in local areas. This level is regarded as the closest government to the people, which also understand their peculiar needs and problems. It is therefore expected that leadership at this level should provide good governance to improve living standard of the local people. However, leadership performance in the rural areas has fallen short of expectation, thereby making good governance a tall dream. Based on this, the paper examined the leadership crisis and the crisis of governance at the grassroots with focus on the congruence effect of the former on the latter. The paper relied on content analysis method for its data. It was noted in the paper that poor leadership at the grassroots was responsible for governance crisis. The paper concluded that availability of good and transformational leaders at the grassroots will assist in entrenching good governance at the local government level
