Ethiopia was lauded for sustained fast economic growth for two decades under the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF). Some scholars framed the regime’s political economy “developmental patrimonialism”, suggesting that EPRDF’s Ethiopia is characterised by “long-horizon rent deployment” that allowed the EPRDF regime to centralise rent for the greater good of entrenching the basis of development. This paper takes interest in such a framing and shows the possible gap in Ethiopia’s development narration. The paper revisits the story of Ethiopia’s economic growth that may have obscured the concentration of economic and political power by the partystate and its elites. It shows how the necessity of exploring the logic of the creation of party-military conglomerates and the nature of the economy remains important to understand what happened and persisted under the EPRDF regime. In this light, the paper argues, the developmental facade of the regime has served the double purpose of power concentration in the hands of the few and an apparent heroism for development that feeds into sacrificing other rights on the altars of authoritarian development. Methodologically, this paper takes a critical look at the economic growth and its interpretations that took centre-stage in EPRDF’s political economy through research conducted during the EPRDF era.