Popular columnist, Sam Omatseye, under fire over column on Achebe

The Nation newspaper's well-known columnist, Sam Omatseye, has drawn
criticisms after he wrote an article considered by some as belittling
the amazing literary works of foremost novelist, Chinua Achebe.
Some have also faulted the columnist for delivering a verdict
suggesting Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka is greater than Mr. Achebe.
In his Monday column, Mr. Omatseye, who heads the paper's Editorial
Board, did what seems a scathing review of Mr. Achebe's literary
legacy, saying Things Fall Apart, the writer's most famous novel, is
big in ideology but lacking in literary essence.
He faulted arguments by Mr. Achebe's fans that he was more deserving
of the Nobel Prize than Mr. Soyinka, saying the Nobel Laureate churned
out a deeper and more elegant body of work.
"Achebe was a good story teller, so was my grandmother," Mr. Omatseye
said of the novelist who passed away barely a week ago in Boston,
Massachusetts. "Turning from a raconteur to an art of sublimity and
depth belongs to the masters. He was described as a great writer but
not a great artist."
"So he wrote good works, not great works, not textured by deeper
insights that you would see in better accomplished works," he
continued. "Those who read TFA (Things Fall Apart) like clockwork may
be put off by some of Soyinka's opus. So they should not obsess out of
ignorance. They should read first. If you knock Soyinka on obscurity,
you have a right. But high art is not always easy to understand. Those
who claim to enjoy TFA cannot write a literate essay on the book and
why it is high art."
Expectedly, Mr. Omatseye's remarks have sparked debates among writers
and drawn immediate fury from Mr. Achebe's fans.
Popular literary critic, Ikhide Ikheloa, who posted the controversial
article on his Facebook page, was first to launch an attack on Mr.
Omatseye. "You read semi-literate crap like this by this Sam Omatseye
guy, you endure the grammatical challenges and the awful logic and
your heart stops with shame and embarrassment – for the author," Mr.
Ikheloa commented below the post.
"I mean, this man wrote this stuff, read it to himself, patted himself
on the back and hit "SEND." What is wrong with this man? Where do you
begin to correct the glaring in accuracies in this drivel? Why should
you? I mean, where in the name of serious scholarship do you begin to
compare Wole Soyinka and Chinua Achebe? Who does that? And to what
purpose? They are two different spirits on many levels."
Literature professor, and renowned columnist, Okey Ndibe, who also
commented on Facebook, called Mr. Omatseye's remarks a"simplistic
binary notion that Soyinka's greatness is conditional on the
(attempted) miniaturizing of Achebe–or vice versa".
"Yet, intelligent people–and especially aesthetes–ought to know that
many extraordinary writers can (and do) coexist within the same
nation-space. They also know how futile it is, in the end, to attempt
a ranking of amazing literary talents whose primary genres are so
different–to say nothing of their temper, reach, focus, and linguistic
styles. Sam is not a new comer to this inelegant game of
Achebe-bashing."
Mr. Achebe's death, which came after what the family said was a brief
illness, unlocked an outpouring of reverence and emotions from around
the world- almost unprecedented for any Nigerian literary export. His
book, Things Fall Apart, more than any other indigenous African work,
is reputed for opening the eyes of the world to the real fabric of a
continent that struggled with colonialism and remained haunted by it.
But at home, Mr. Achebe's death again proved a fresh opportunity for
his critics to take another haunting look at his work. Criticism of
the late writer's work was initially sparked last year after the
release of his last book, There Was A Country, which captured his
civil war experience.
In the memoir published in 2012, Mr. Achebe claimed the Igbos were
victims of genocide and blamed the late Yoruba leader, Obafemi
Awolowo, for masterminding the civil war policy that starved several
thousands to death.
That comment, among others, stirred bitter altercations between many
Yoruba and Hausa/Fulani intellectuals on one hand and their Igbo
counterparts on the other.
Since his death however, only a few critics have publicly criticized
Mr. Achebe. While a Bayero University, Kano, English and French
professor, Ibrahim Bello-Kano, lambasted Mr. Achebe for all his works
including "There Was a Country" which he referred to as "Achebe's most
inferior work", Mr. Omatseye limited his concern to his most popular
book,Things Fall Apart. Read more here:
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