Venezuela, Trump And Nigeria: Why Distant Power Games Often End Up On Our Dinner Table

Like many Nigerians, I have learnt to be suspicious whenever global headlines insist that a crisis “has nothing to do with us.” History has taught us otherwise. From oil shocks to financial crashes, from terrorism to currency crises, what begins as a distant quarrel often arrives quietly at our doorstep, sometimes without knocking.

That is why recent developments around Venezuela and the renewed attention the United States is paying to it, deserve closer scrutiny from Nigerians. Not because we should take sides in American politics, but because the mechanisms being activated there have consequences far beyond Caracas. And those consequences tend to land hardest on countries like ours.

As someone who works in cybersecurity and disinformation research, I am trained to look beyond surface narratives. In my field, the most dangerous attacks are rarely loud. They are subtle, layered and often disguised as something else. The same applies to geopolitics.

Public discussion of Venezuela usually follows a predictable script. On one side, it is framed as socialism versus capitalism. On the other, as democracy versus dictatorship. These labels are not entirely meaningless, but they increasingly miss the point.

What matters more today is financial infrastructure: who controls flows of money, energy, logistics and information. Power is exercised not only through tanks and sanctions, but through access to liquidity, correspondent banking, trade insurance, shipping routes and digital platforms. In cybersecurity, we call this attack surface. Venezuela, whatever one thinks of its leadership, sits on a very sensitive part of the global financial attack surface: oil, sanctions, offshore finance and informal money networks.

There is a school of thought, popular in alternative geopolitical analysis, that what the United States is doing in Venezuela is less about changing a government and more about disrupting financial and illicit networks that pass through the country. You do not need to accept every version of this argument to appreciate its implications.

If major powers begin tightening the screws on: offshore banking, informal dollar flows, narco-linked liquidity, and sanction-evasion networks, then the effects ripple outward. Nigeria is not immune to this. In fact, we are unusually exposed.

We are a dollar-dependent economy that does not earn enough dollars. We import refined fuel. We rely heavily on correspondent banking relationships. We operate in a global system that becomes less forgiving every time financial enforcement tightens.

When dollars become scarce globally, the naira feels it. When banks abroad become cautious, Nigerian businesses feel it. When informal financial channels are disrupted in one region, pressure builds elsewhere. Money, like water, looks for the path of least resistance.

Nigeria and Venezuela share an uncomfortable similarity: enormous oil wealth combined with chronic structural weaknesses. Neither country refines enough of what it produces. Both depend on global price stability they do not control. Both are vulnerable to shocks caused by decisions made far away.

Any serious disruption in Venezuelan oil flows affects global supply dynamics, even if indirectly. Traders adjust. Middlemen adapt. Insurance costs change. Prices wobble. For Nigerians, this often translates into: fuel price uncertainty, subsidy stress, FX pressure, and inflation that refuses to behave. When we complain that “the market is doing anyhow,” we are often reacting to forces we were never invited to negotiate.

In security studies, the term irregular warfare describes conflict that avoids conventional battlefields. It relies on non-state actors, financial pressure, information manipulation and plausible deniability.

Nigeria does not need a lecture on this. We live it. Terror groups financed through opaque channels, arms flowing across porous borders, social media narratives that inflame ethnic and religious tensions, election seasons flooded with coordinated disinformation deepfakes and synthetic media becoming cheaper and harder to detect.

In cybersecurity, we know that attackers rarely announce themselves. They blend into normal traffic. They exploit trust. They weaponize confusion. If global powers are increasingly fighting through financial and informational systems rather than open warfare, then Nigeria is not on the sidelines. We are part of the terrain.

One uncomfortable truth Nigerians must confront is that the global financial system is not neutral. The dollar is not just a currency. It is a gatekeeping mechanism. When access to dollar clearing is restricted, countries feel it immediately. When compliance thresholds rise, banks in developing economies pay the price. When de-risking happens, it is rarely Western consumers who suffer first.

From a cybersecurity perspective, this is systemic risk concentration. Too much power flows through too few pipes. If Venezuela is being targeted as a node in a broader financial enforcement strategy, then Nigeria should ask a simple question: what happens when similar attention shifts closer to home?

This is not paranoia. It is risk assessment.

Here is where my professional background forces me to be blunt. Economic instability creates ideal conditions for disinformation. When people are anxious about prices, jobs and security, they become more susceptible to simplified explanations and emotional narratives. Foreign and domestic actors know this. They exploit it. We have already seen: fake exchange rate screenshots circulating online, manipulated videos attributed to public officials, ethnicized economic grievances amplified by anonymous accounts.

A stressed financial system is a vulnerable information environment. If global financial battles intensify, Nigeria must strengthen not only its economic resilience but its cognitive resilience. Otherwise, we will fight yesterday’s problems with yesterday’s tools.

We like to joke that Nigeria can survive anything. Sometimes that confidence borders on superstition. Yes, we have endured coups, crashes and countless policy experiments. But resilience should not be confused with invincibility.

When elephants fight, the grass suffers. When financial giants adjust their strategies, developing economies absorb the shock. No amount of “we move” changes that reality.

Rather than arguing about Trump, Maduro or Washington politics, Nigerians should watch: shifts in global dollar liquidity, changes in correspondent banking relationships, evolving sanctions regimes, energy market realignment and the weaponization of information during economic stress.

These are the real signals. Everything else is noise.

Venezuela is not Nigeria. But the systems being tested there are the same systems Nigeria depends on. Ignoring that connection because it is uncomfortable or complex does not protect us. It only leaves us unprepared.

In cybersecurity, we say that attackers count on complacency. Nations should know better.

If nothing else, the current moment should remind us that sovereignty in the modern world is not declared. It is maintained, daily, through financial discipline, information integrity and strategic awareness.

And those battles, whether we like it or not, are already underway.

Young Ozogwu writes from Abuja