Local government is the tier of government that is closer to the people. Therefore, the expenses incurred towards rendering services to the people are important and these services cannot be rendered without finance. It is on this ground this study examined internally generated revenue and public expenditure in Nigeria. The study adopted an exploratory research design with the use of secondary data from 1993 to 2017 on IGR and public expenditure of the local governments in Nigeria. Content analysis was employed as data analysis method. It was found that IGR and public expenditure move in the same direction but public expenditure moves faster than the IGR. The study employed the use of second generation theory. The study recommended that local governments in Nigeria should expand their internally generated revenue by creating additional sources of revenue that is within what the Nigerian constitution stipulated and citizen friendly. Also, it recommended that appropriate measures should be put in place to checkmate IGR in all Local government. It concludes that there exist a positive relationship between local government IGR and public expenditure despite the later outgrowing the former at the end of years understudy.