The "Great British People" Facebook page, which purports to be from Yorkshire, has had 1.3 million views for its latest video of an elderly white British man crying about his pension. Other videos show reporters discussing "the overwhelming scale of mass immigration" and asking viewers if they miss "the Britain we used to know".
Boko Haram’s kidnapping-for-ransom (KfR) tactics exemplify the shift Lawson Akhigbe describes in his April 2026 article: modern Nigerian insurgencies as “grotesque startups” where cash flow, not conviction, sustains the beast. What began as opportunistic grabs for foreign hostages evolved into a sophisticated, multi-purpose revenue engine intertwined with ideology, propaganda, recruitment, and psychological warfare. Yet factional splits, territorial losses, and competition with purely criminal bandits have diversified and, in some ways, industrialized these tactics. This analysis compares Boko Haram’s (Jama’atu Ahl as-Sunnah li-Da’awati wal-Jihad, or JAS, under Abubakar Shekau’s legacy) approaches to its ISWAP splinter, to northwestern bandits, and to historical/contemporary parallels (FARC, Somali pirates, AQIM). It draws on evolution, methods, motivations, outcomes, and policy implications—highlighting nuances like gendered violence, government complicity, and the high human cost of “starve the beast” strategies.
If you had a time machine and could send just one message to your past self, what would it say? Answering repeat questions from WordPress
To truly understand Edo State today, one must trace its lineage back to the colonial provinces that formed its core: Benin Province and Afemai Province.
These tactics blended fiscal innovation, technocratic recruitment, institutional reform, political networking, and strategic confrontation with the federal government. They created the so-called “Lagos Model”, a proof-of-concept for sub-national self-sufficiency that influenced his successors (Fashola, Ambode, Sanwo-Olu) and later his national approach.
Centre for Nigeria Progress 