Former President Olusegun Obasanjo is in war mod and he is not hiding it. The evidence could be found in the latest edition of New African. In an interview he granted the monthly Pan-African magazine, Obasanjo took on world acclaimed writer, Prof. Chinua Achebe, and Nigeria’s incumbent President Goodluck Jonathan.

The retired army general is angry that Achebe in his new book, There Was A Country, accused post-war governments, including Obasanjo’s, of marginalising Achebe’s ethnic group, the Igbo, which led a failed secessionist bid from 1967 - 70.

Obasanjo did not only seek to exonerate himself from the allegation but went ahead to accuse Achebe of living in the past.

His words: “Maybe he is making those remarks because he is not living in Nigeria. If he was living in Nigeria, when I was the president of this country, an Igbo lady was my Minister of Finance, and Igbo man was the Governor of the Central Bank; an Igbo man was one of the military service chiefs. The permanent representative to the UN was also an Igbo person. What more do you want? For someone to say the civil war has not ended, 40 years after its conclusion, that person is living in the past.”

In the case of Jonathan, Obasanjo descended heavily on him over the precarious security situation in the country. Hear him: “If the President is the chief security officer of the country and there is a security problem, where do you go for the solution? And if that solution is not coming from the chief security officer, who else inside and outside will get a solution? He has the responsibility to solve the problem, and nobody else should be blamed but him.”

•Photo: Ex-President Obasanjo.