History does not repeat itself. It signals. And when empires feel threatened, they stop explaining and start enforcing.
What unfolded around Venezuela is not about drugs. It is not about terrorism. It is not about democracy. Those are slogans for television. This is about money, power, and a global system built on force pretending to be finance.
For over five decades, American dominance has rested on one invisible pillar. The petrodollar. Not aircraft carriers. Not alliances. Not moral authority. Oil priced in dollars and only dollars.
When Venezuela moved to escape that trap, the punishment was swift and methodical.
The economic collapse so often cited as evidence of Venezuelan failure did not begin with mismanagement. It began with nationalisation. When Hugo Chavez reclaimed Venezuelan oil from foreign control and redirected it toward social development, Washington declared economic war. Sanctions followed. Financial isolation followed. Asset seizures followed. Access to global credit was blocked. Refining capacity was sabotaged. The economy was strangled deliberately.
Chavez was pursued relentlessly. When he survived, the pressure shifted to his successor.
Nicolas Maduro did not inherit a functioning economy. He inherited an economy under siege. His primary crime was not corruption or tyranny. It was refusal. Refusal to surrender Venezuelan sovereignty. Refusal to reverse nationalisation. Refusal to submit to Western dictates that had already bled the country dry for decades.
For that refusal, he was branded a criminal.
Sanctions were tightened. Billions in Venezuelan assets were frozen abroad. Millions of Venezuelans were forced to leave the country in search of greener pastures. Oil sales were blocked. Access to spare parts and finance was denied. NGOs proliferated overnight, not to feed people, but to destabilize society. Media narratives were coordinated. Elections were interfered with or delegitimized in advance. Parallel governments were invented and internationally recognized without votes. Economic pain was then blamed on the very leadership being economically suffocated.
This was not new. It had been done before.
Zimbabwe was strangled after reclaiming land from white settler control. Sanctions followed. Capital flight followed. Currency collapse followed. Then the West pointed to the wreckage and declared African incompetence.
Venezuela followed the same script.
What changed was timing.
Venezuela did not just resist. It adapted. It began trading oil outside the dollar. It built alternative payment channels. It partnered with China, Russia, and Iran. It sought shelter in BRICS. And that is when patience ran out.
The contrast with Ukraine exposes the hypocrisy completely.
When Russia drew a red line against Ukraine joining NATO and the European Union, the United States did not invade Russia. It fought a proxy war instead. Ukrainians paid the price. Europe absorbed the economic shock. America supplied weapons, narratives, and financing from a safe distance.
But Venezuela was not afforded even that pretense.
Aspiring to join BRICS and escape decades old economic strangulation was treated as an act of war. Not proxy war. Direct enforcement. Because Venezuela does not border Russia. It sits on oil. And oil outside the dollar is an existential threat.
This is the real double standard of the so called rules based order.
Russia defending its security perimeter is framed as aggression. Venezuela defending its economic sovereignty is framed as criminality. One is sanctioned through proxies. The other is crushed directly.
Because the real crime is not violence. It is independence.
There is also the matter of timing, and timing in imperial behavior is never accidental.
January 3rd is not just a date. It is a signature.
On January 3rd 1990, the United States invaded Panama and captured Manuel Noriega under the banner of drugs and democracy. The real objective was control. Control of strategic geography. Control of financial flows. Control of a leader who had become inconvenient. The message was clear then and it remains clear now. Defiance will be corrected.
Thirty six years later, almost to the day, January 3rd appears again in Venezuela. Same language. Same justification. Same choreography. A date recycled not out of nostalgia but as psychological continuity. This is how empires remind the world that they have done this before and are prepared to do it again.
January 3rd is enforcement season.
It is chosen deliberately to send a signal to markets, to allies, to adversaries, and to wavering states in the Global South. This is not improvisation. This is doctrine. When a country crosses a red line tied to American monetary dominance, the response is not debate. It is demonstration.
The significance of January 3rd is therefore not Venezuela alone. It is precedent. It is warning. It is a timestamp on the end of illusions.
And for countries like Nigeria, watching from the sidelines while remaining internally weak and externally dependent, the message could not be louder. History is not whispering anymore. It is announcing dates.
The deeper truth is that the petrodollar is already weakening. Russia sells energy in rubles and yuan. China has built CIPS to bypass SWIFT. Iran has survived by trading outside Western systems. Saudi Arabia openly discusses non dollar settlement. BRICS is constructing parallel financial rails quietly and deliberately.
Venezuela joining that bloc with the largest proven oil reserves on earth would have accelerated the end of forced dollar dependence. That is why it had to be stopped.
And that is why this moment matters for Nigeria.
Nigeria is walking the same dangerous line without the same protection. A resource rich state with a compromised leadership class. An economy dollar trapped. Elections under suspicion. Institutions weakened. Security fractured. Elites dependent on Western validation rather than national legitimacy.
In a world fragmenting into power blocs, this is not neutrality. It is exposure.
The same tools used against Venezuela can be deployed anywhere strategic enough and internally weak enough. Sanctions. Financial isolation. Narrative warfare. NGO driven unrest. Electoral delegitimization. Economic strangulation disguised as concern.
Nigeria cannot afford to be naive.
Strengthening ties with BRICS is no longer ideological. It is defensive. It is about options. About insulating the economy from weaponized finance. About diversifying alliances before choices are imposed. About leadership legitimacy that comes from the people, not foreign approval.
Because when empires feel decline, they do not negotiate. They enforce.
Venezuela is not the story. It is the signal.
And Nigeria is close enough to hear it if it has ears to hear.
Nigeria still has a narrow window to reset its trajectory, but that window is closing fast. This is not a matter for gradual reform or distant election cycles.
Waiting until 2027 to revise it’s leadership is a luxury Nigeria no longer has. The predators have already smelt blood. A tainted leadership class, brazen corruption, catastrophic mismanagement of priorities, collapsing infrastructure, institutionalized theft of public resources, governors hiding in denial, and a state that spends billions while healthcare and education barely exist have rendered the country dangerously exposed. A compromised electoral process has drained public hope, while unresolved ethnic and religious fault lines created by forced amalgamation continue to threaten internal cohesion.
In this condition, Nigeria does not look sovereign. It looks vulnerable.
To survive the coming realignment, Nigeria must urgently restructure, restore legitimacy, and align decisively with progressive global forces capable of resisting imperial domination and economic exploitation. Delay will not be neutral. It will be fatal.
By Hon Chimazuru Nnadi-Oforgu
Duruebube Uzii na Abosi
OBLONG MEDIA UNLIMITED 
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