Writing in The Nation, contrarian columnist Sam Omatseye writes that while Chinua Achebe and Wole Soyinka were both great writers, Soyinka was the great artist. Literature, says Omatseye, is not everyone’s game. In his own example, he had to come of age and know the art of appreciating the collaboration of words into narratives before he saw the light. The article squarely addresses two claims: One, that Achebe deserved the Nobel Prize but was deprived. Two, that Achebe was greater than Soyinka. Omatseye vehemently rejects both claims. Achebe was nominated several times for the Prize, but he did not get it because his works came short once weighed against the competition, other works also nominated by various groups.

TFA was a great book not because of its literary properties but because of its ideological potency. On A Man of the People, while it may have appeared to be prophetic, it was hardly original since the conversation about military takeovers was already in the air on the continent. Soyinka, on the other hand, won based on his plays and poems. Anyone who objects at Soyinka’s prize has probably not gone beyond the popular The Lion and the Jewel and The Jero Plays, works which merely compare in richness to TFA. They ought to read Death and the King’s Horsemen and Madmen and Specialists, among others, great works primed with layer after layer of thought and meaning wrapped in narratives. Click here to read the whole article.

For more:
http://www.234globe.com/story/302/Achebe+versus+Soyinka.html

not here again, we have already had enough of this. no one cares who is the greatest let Achebe rest in peace.

I actually agree with you. Still I learnt a thing or two from Omatseye's write-up.