There is a Yoruba proverb for our insecurity and the external help we got last Thursday: Let the man see the snake; let the woman kill it. What matters is that the snake dies (Kí ọkùnrin rí ejò, kí obìnrin pa á; ohun tí ó ṣe pàtàkì ni pé kí ejò kú). The proverb is a lesson in pragmatism over pride. It is a proverb of necessity. When danger appears, pride must step aside. Whoever can strike should strike, so long the threat is neutralised. The proverb does not shame the man for failing to act as a man; it does not unduly glorify the woman for wielding the blow. It insists only on outcome: the danger must die.
Slimy, slithering and deadly, terrorists are snakes. But Nigeria is an orísirísi country; a nation of assorted nations that lack consensus on everything, including on whether snakes deserve to die. Some view bandit snakes with horror and revulsion; some, like the pre-Hellenic Crete, in appeasement and supplication, feed terrorist snakes at their family altars. To them, it is a taboo to kill terrorists. America attacked (or said it attacked) those snakes last week.
Nigeria’s security crisis entered a new phase when the United States bombed terrorist targets on Nigerian soil. If the terrorists are the snake, and Nigeria merely “saw” while America “killed,” then the logic is simple: let no one quarrel over who held the machete. Men too limp to be husbands, men with permanently flaccid members, swallow pride and hire helpers. Nigeria is that husband. If bombs from afar kill those who slaughter villagers here, let no one romanticise sovereignty.
National humiliation or international collaboration? A friend from Cote d’Voire asked me on Saturday. Again, I read the proverb: Let the man see the snake; let the woman kill it. What matters is that the snake dies. But, in this instance, did the snake really die? Where is the carcass? If the snake did not die, then it means the stranger merely fouled the air for us. This is the point we say Yoruba proverbs are rarely so simple and rarely so innocent.
The same tongue that valourises results also prizes and protects ownership of the compound. How safe is the household if the foreign help did not kill the snake? There was a deadly bomb blast in Zamfara on Saturday, two days after the US intervention. What was that?
If the snake was merely hurt, another proverb walks briskly behind the first, slower, more suspicious: À gé kù ejò tí ń s’oro bí agbón (half-dead snake that stings like wasps). This is a proverb of incomplete decapitation, a proverb of unfinished war. Yoruba wisdom rarely travels alone. With help from President-General Donald Trump, it appears we have killed our snake halfway; now, may it not sting like wasps.
Experts and experience say a half-dead snake is more dangerous than a living one. Wounded, it no longer obeys patterns. It stops all announcement of itself. It lashes blindly, vengefully, unpredictably. What was once a visible threat becomes a roaming terror.
If the US strikes merely scattered terrorists, dislodging them without destroying their networks, their ideology, and local knowledge, then we have not killed the snake. We have only bruised it. And a bruised viper, flushed from its lair, often slithers into villages, markets, and soft targets.
The snakes terrorising Nigeria must die, their killers do not matter. If snakes must die, they must die totally and completely. My first proverb demands effectiveness. The second warns against the illusion of effectiveness. Tell Trump not to leave yet. If he has left, he must come back and finish what he started.
There is an existential reason for that demand. A foreign strike may carpet-bomb terrorist camps and dens of bandits, but it can also produce splinter, smaller, angrier cells that sting like scattered bees. As of today, what we have been told is no news about territory recaptured, ideology dismantled, long-term authority over our lives restored. Only echoes.
Yesterday, I read reports of terrified terrorists relocating from their ancestral home. “I felt their movement in my local government as well as in Agatu Local Government Area. They have been running away from Sokoto to coastal areas in Gwer West and Agatu with sophisticated arms and grazing openly. They are in my domain.” A traditional ruler in Benue State was quoted as saying this on Sunday. Someone also read it and said Trump has scared the bandits. And I asked: “really?”
In November 1893, Dallas L. Sharp wrote ‘Feigned death in Snakes’. What he wrote is a useful reminder that what looks like the enemy in flight is often a calculated performance. Sharp’s snake, he notes, does not bite itself in despair; it stages death because it finds itself outmatched in battle. So it lies still, body fouled with its own stench, selling the illusion of uselessness until danger passes. Terrorism works the same way: not every apparent collapse is defeat, not every silence is peace. Sometimes the snake turns on its back not because it is dead, but because it knows that pretending to be dead is the most effective way to live and strike. Nigeria is a burrow of vipers; it breeds snakes and worships them. The more you kill, the more you see. That is why Mr Trump must be begged to stay and finish his unfinished business.
