AS VENEZUELA IMPLODES, CAN YOU CHOOSE BETWEEN NIGERIA AND VENEZUELA?

We are definitely in injury time now.
Or if you prefer, at the Tipping Point.
Any reference made by Nigerians to the implosion in Venezuela is not for the fun of it.

With its oil resources, Venezuela under Hugo Chavez was for decades able to thumb up it's nose at the US and at the same time provide a lifeline to an embattled Cuba. Support and opposition to Chavez and his policies were almost evenly divided especially where it mattered most in the comity of the Organization of American States, OAS. . Then Obama initiated a rapprochement with Cuba, a step that seems irreversible despite the huffing and puffing by President Trump. Time will tell.

Now with the passing of Chavez, the Venezuelans seem to have recovered their voices and lost all taste for authoritarian regimes. Hence the trenchant opposition to President Maduro continuing the policies and methods inherited from Chavez. It is simplistic assuming, like Maduro has, that the upheaval in Caracas and other cities was birthed in Washington DC. Nigerians, who will not lift a finger to oppose bad governance at home, have either railed against purported US interference or condemned the Venezuelan regime for its serial failure to return the nation to the path of growth. We must thank the highly unappreciated Senator Ben Murray-Bruce who had steadfastly reminded Nigerians that, like in the case of Venezuela, unearned oil-derived revenue will not take the nation to the promised land. That's the lesson we should all take away from the events in Caracas.