Irony of Development Agendas: Perspectives on APRM under Presidents Thabo Mbeki and Olusegun Obasanjo

ABSTRACT The attainment of development is largely consequent upon the throes of political governance as a fragment of public administration. In truth, the nexus between political governance and development is crucial to the advancement of social justice. The quest to reverse Africa’s underdevelopment and de-democratisation instigated its political leaders to initiate, formalise, and adopt the African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM). The APRM is expected to promote good governance, transparency, democracy, political accountability, and other indicators of development, thereby entrenching developmentalism. Based on Gerry Stoker’s new governance theory, the paper examines the Country Self-Assessment Report (CSAR) of South Africa and Nigeria under the administrations of Thabo Mbeki and Olusegun Obasanjo based on the four theoretical pillars of the APRM. It finds that successive regimes after Mbeki and Obasanjo exhibited poor commitment to implement the ideals of the APRM to further the gains made by the understudied regimes and thereby weakened the developmentalism push of the countries.