In the postcolonial historiography of African Civil Wars, the Biafra secession was a major conflict, considering the dimensions of not just the carnage but the international involvements. Foreign powers and interests, by their actions and inactions, supported the war with intent to balkanize Nigeria. In this reexamination, it is argued that Nigeria’s naïve elitism was solely to blame for the unprecedented foreign meddling which is consequent upon Prime Minister Tafawa Balewa’s maiden speech at the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA). Laden with strong intents to become a veritable global contender, the foreign policy speech expressly launched Nigeria’s intentions to operate in the commanding heights of global politics at barely a week into nationhood. However, Balewa’s proposals, which though were mere wishful thinking, were also premature and had betrayed Nigeria’s naivety about global politics and its delicate power structure, order and balance. The launch, particularly in the height of the Cold War was ill-timed as power calculations dictate the pace of global politics, and every action/inaction often had consequences. Balewa’s ambitions backfired, pitching his fragile state against the vested capitalist interests of the imperial powers, who Vladimir Lenin says, had shared out the world among themselves. These shares were also jealously guarded in the brutal mafia style. Consequently, Nigeria became a pawn in the chess game of power politics, a fierce one that she least imagined or prepared. This paper, doubling as a handbook on foreign policy, critically dissected the speech previously acclaimed by scholars and bureaucrats as being greatly historic, activist and in national interest, and rather argues that it was unwholesome, nonstrategic, irritable and inimical to the interest and stability of a new state in world politics. It was also diametrical to the tenets and practice of diplomacy and internationalism. The paper contends that the speech was not only arrantly nonsensical but arrogantly preposterous for a postcolonial state. It asserts that Nigeria’s approach to external affairs was improper and founded on laughable assumptions. The mediocre speech precipitated the civil war as the infuriated powers surreptitiously plotted to smash Nigeria into smithereens and less-ambitious states
