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In the United States, corporate culture has a colorful vocabulary for the hyper-sycophant: the brown-noser, the bootlicker, the corporate shill. But in Nigeria, this behavior isn't just a personality trait of that one annoying guy in middle management. It is a highly sophisticated, deeply institutionalized standard operating procedure known colloquially as "Eye Service."
What should have been a routine anti-smuggling enforcement - fake chassis number, alleged unpaid duty of N74 million on a vehicle valued at N298 million - turned into a full-blown constitutional crisis.
In his farewell address to the American people in 1989, Ronald Reagan spoke of America as a "shining city upon a hill"—a beacon of freedom, opportunity, democracy, and prosperity. The phrase itself was borrowed from a much older tradition, but Reagan made it uniquely American. The United States was not merely a powerful nation; it was an example to others. A place where institutions mattered, where the rule of law prevailed, and where anyone, regardless of background, could aspire to succeed
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.
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 