In Chapter 1 of the Book of Romans, the Bible lists murder among the offences that are “worthy of death”. In Nigeria, though, the authorities have mollycoddled terrorists for decades, placing politics above the lives of the people they are supposed to protect. In Nigeria’s North Central, for instance, state governors and community leaders have typically acted like spineless cowards, forever lamenting the genocidal onslaughts of Fulani herdsmen but doing nothing to tackle them. Whereas the Bible provides for self-defence in these circumstances (Nehemiah 4:17), religious leaders continue to bind the people in chains of inaction as the dogs of an accursed ancestry run riot over their future.

Article 51 of the United Nations Charter provides for “the inherent right of individual or collective self-defence if an armed attack occurs”. If all the world had was this theory, there might still be some debate about what to do. But history shows exactly what to do. Look at the United States and its response to 9/11. Bush and his administration went into full war mode, unleashing every weapon at their disposal on al-Qaeda operatives. In Russia, Vladimir Putin saw Islamist militants as existential threats and used heavy military force to take them out. The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, known for suicide bombings and political assassinations, were eliminated by the Sri Lankan government in a bloody episode. Remember the battle of 2009. Go to Israel and you see Benjamin Netanyahu neutralising perceived threats to Israeli peace. The Algerian government used similar tactics against Islamist groups conducting bombings and massacres.

As Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu once quipped, “The only way to fight terrorism is to fight terrorism.” Before him, PM Golda Meir had said: “You cannot negotiate peace with someone who has come to kill you.” In Vom Kriege (On War), the Prussian general and theorist Carl von Clausewitz wrote: “Kind-hearted people might of course think there was some ingenious way to disarm or defeat an enemy without too much bloodshed and might imagine this is the true goal of the art of war. Pleasant as it sounds, it is a fallacy that must be exposed.”

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Clausewitz may well have been addressing our leaders, who have done everything humanly possible to prove that the Fulani terrorists currently ravaging the country deserve no recompense for their atrocities. That is why the bloodthirsty demons who decapitated Mr Michael Oyedokun and abducted his fellow teachers and students penultimate week could carry out such an atrocity. They are busy torturing the innocent, defenceless pupils of Community High School, Ahoro-Esinle as we speak, and possibly raping the female captives, including babies, like they have done in the past.

The state’s principal duty is to protect citizens. If terrorists fundamentally break the social contract by targeting civilians and rejecting lawful order, it is a no-brainer that neutralising them with the repressive apparatuses of the state is the right thing to do. As I have often noted on this page, if terrorists are not ravaging the nooks and crannies of Saudi Arabia, it is because they know the sad fate that awaits them should they dare. The Saudi authorities know that any state mollycoddling combatants posing ongoing threats to its sovereignty is no state at all. In Nigeria, though, the state, in large part because of its warped structure and politics, and an ethnically unbalanced military, has been loath to assert its authority. Its weak, muted response continues to embolden terrorists by the day.

It is time communities across the country protected themselves. Let them bathe the killers in the acid of reprisal. Let them dig tunnels and repel the terrorists without any video show-off. In the South-West, the OPC and Agbekoya, working with the state governments, must immediately launch underground operations. Amotekun should involve inter-state units. Let the killers swim in their own blood. We cannot face extermination in the name of amalgamation. The communities that constitute Nigeria predated that experiment. They should resurrect ancient technologies of surveillance and communal security, and save themselves from looming genocide. The killers will always come back: the solution is to ensure that they do not live. Across the country, the elite should apply for gun permits. It is lawful. Hausaland, Yorubaland, Idomaland and Igboland must become the burying ground of the killers from distant lands. If the people hitherto merely lamenting reach for a machete and land it on a terrorist’s head – or plunge a knife into his stomach and mercilessly twist the blade– the nature and shape of terror attacks will change dramatically. Community hands must repel the killers.

In Yorubaland Encircled — June 11, 2022 — I wrote: “There are not a few who believe that the despisers and would-be exterminators of the race have been arriving the length and breadth of the land in droves, taking up strategic positions. Travel on the Lagos-Ibadan expressway and notice the shanties springing up in bushes. Danger lurks. The occupants may not always be compatriots in search of daily bread; they may be the dregs of an advancing army preparing the trimmings of assault.” With specific reference to the forests, I added: “Death lurks in Yoruba forests. Farming is risky: rape without a slit throat is a lucky escape. The forests are no longer the spring from which pen wielders like Tutuola and Fagunwa documented demonology. They are no longer the site of fickle ancestors: they have been taken over by fair men from distant lands, men who maraud for a living and have no subscription to Nigeria’s green-white-green. They are merchants of blood who brook no dissidence.”

Repelling these demons with raw violence is not unlawful; what’s unlawful is beheading teachers and abducting two-year-olds. Across the country, communities must fight back. They must demonstrate that the troublers of the land do not have any patent on violence. They must heed the advice of former Defence Chief Theophilus Danjuma, who urged Nigerians to fight back or die in droves. The killers can be allowed, when caught, to choose between decapitation and immolation. They deserve such mercy when they ask for it. By all means, let the nation pardon them by slaughtering them instead of feeding them to crocodiles.