What exactly was toppled in Libya with the overthrow of Muammar Gadaffi? A dictator, or a working power structure? It was utterly predictable that military intervention would be a fiasco. Sadly the lessons of Iraq did not to the disastrous consequences of their punitive mission.

Western military strategists had of course, identified the nerve centres they would need to target to bring down their enemy. They made detailed appraisals of Gaddafi’s defensive strongholds, his air bases, listening stations, electronic warfare and communications networks, tank

regiments, ground troops, planning and command centres, logistics hubs, key infrastructure and administration. Everything. This took months of paintstaking eapionage nor did they have the benefit of having drone base spread across Libya.

In Nigeria they have SIX. The magnitude of Intel they have gathered in the last five years will end hard for the average person to fathom... because of this they failed to take account of the most essential consideration: the nature of the Arab Berber world.

And it’s this monumental oversight that holds the key to Libya’s current’s chaos, along with the chaos. You cannot simply launch an attack on a country without any knowledge of the mindset or character of its inhabitants.

You can destroy every tank and combat aircraft in its arsenal, wipe out its entire networks, but if you don’t know what kind of people you’re dealing with, you are merely opening a Pandora’s box, and every peace operation embarked on is doomed only to throw fuel on the fire.

To understand the Libyan tragedy we must first study the peculiarities of Arab-Berber culture. The Libyan people did not exist as a homogenous nation under one flag and sharing one common ideal. It was a collection of fiercely autonomous, proud and unruly tribes, suspicious of

centralised rule. The terrible reality of the Libyan situation is precisely what Nato’s generals did not deem it necessary to know, dangerously choosing to ignore the unique combination of factors that make up the Libyan mindset.They failed to consider how Libyans would react to

having a war thrust upon them. Say what you want about Gadaffi, Gaddafi played a defining role in the rebuilding of the modern Libyan nation. By overthrowing the monarchy the revolutionary army officer achieved what no sovereign before him had accomplished.

he succeeded in bringing together the intensely opposed ethnic groups of the north and south, who had always despised one another. To the casual western this might seem a basic achievement and of little import, but for an inveterate tribalist it is little short of a miracle.

For four decades Gaddafi acted as guarantor of the nation’s stability and a careful moderator between tribal leaders, reconciling warring parties and delicately handling the hangovers of the past that still awoke old demons from time to time.

Gaddafi, as vigilant keeper of the flame, kept a weather eye open, heaping privileges on some and prestige on others in order to consolidate alliances and plaster over any cracks that threatened to appear.

By listening to Nicholas Sarkozy and toppling Gaddafi, Nato interfered with the order of things. Once the personal guarantor of national unity had been lynched by his compatriots, the Libyan people were left to their own devices in an appalling state of upheaval, with no roadmap

Through herd mentality the leaderless state was drawn back to its one familiar point of reference, the tribal system of its ancestors, and with it the full force of its legacy: a return to the hatred of the past, rivalries, violent raids and an unquenchable thirst for vengeance.

After civil war, pillaging, settling of scores, and destruction on a massive scale, each ethnic group has withdrawn to its own territory and demands autonomy. The bastion Gaddafi built has crumbled. Libyan unity is now no more than an old story, a fairytale no one believes in.

In the face of western bewilderment, the situation has spreading throughout the whole of north Africa down to West Africa, turning neighbouring countries into powder kegs whose shock waves could destroy the stability, dragging the rest of Africa into a calamitous downward spiral

This must never be allowed to happen to Nigeria. With a population of 200 million we will take the whole of West/Central and parts of East Africa down with us. It will be apocalyptic.