Matters Arising (1)

Showbiz News May - 23 - 2014 , 09:57

We have finally put to rest the 2014 Vodafone Ghana Music Awards (VGMA) and its attendant issues. The issues of nomination gaffes, number of artistes on the bill, who should have won, people who didn’t want the award but were “given”, GHC70,000 performance fee and many more have all come and gone.

Such is the controversy that surrounds the VGMA every year and thankfully we can move on to other matters on the Ghanaian entertainment calendar.

Now that we have some time for ourselves, we can go into a few of those issues I refer to as matters arising to see how we can discuss them and move on to the next issues in later editions of Listening and Watching. Come along with me.

FAUSTER OR FRAUDSTER?

When I was at the University of Ghana, Legon, there was one gentleman I was supposed to be reading the same subject with and became close friends. He claimed to be an old student of Mfantsipim School, went to KNUST for a while before deciding to leave for Legon, was the son of Alhaji Grunsah among others.

He went with us into examination rooms at the end of every semester, wrote IAs as well and when the results were released he went with us to check and was usually the one who cussed lecturers at the top of his voice for “giving” him an A- or a B+!

It was later found out that Murtala was not a student of the university, he was never allocated the room he occupied at Akuafo Hall (inner room at Level 200), and he had never been to Kwabotwe nor was he a relative of Grunsah. He escaped when his cover was blown by old students of Mfantsipim School and never to be seen again.

One of the biggest radio and television issues this week has been about a young man who granted an interview to GTV’s Abdul Hayi Moomen on his late evening show Moomen Tonight. The young man according to Moomen had such a rich CV it took him the longest time to introduce him than any other guest he had had on the show.

The issue became rife on social media because a footage of the interview was posted on YouTube and many who saw it were astounded, nay make that gobsmacked, by the fact that the young man came across as not who he had been telling Moomen and the audience that he was.

The gentleman who called himself as Fauster Atta Mensa was introduced as a young computer scientist who was said to have, among the numerous other accolades, did some work for the United States’ NASA and that he had won a Nobel Prize at the United Nation of all places.

Look at it this way, the nation’s biggest broadcaster brings in a guest who claims to have won a Nobel Prize at the United Nations (well I learnt when I was in Class 3 at the Madina D/C 2 Primary School that Nobel Prizes are given to deserving winners in Norway and Sweden) and none of the producers or the presenter decided to fact check this. I mean this was an elephant in the room and yet no one saw it!

That error of judgment and professional negligence aside, most of the things he said when the interview proper started were totally in contradiction to some of things Moomen had said about him in the introduction. Why Moomen didn’t subject him to strict proof is the biggest mystery since the issue of the Loch Ness Monster appeared in Scottish lore.

When the fecal matter hit the fan (excuse my French) and people were making jokes out of it, although it was a very serious issue, someone decided to pull down the video of the interview that was posted on YouTube

A brilliant person called Kofi Abronomaa Nyarko took it upon himself to check all the claims Fauster had made on the show and it came out that most, if not all, were total falsehood.

Just like my fraudulent schoolmate, I am dumbfounded by the confidence of this young man to have come on national TV to perpetrate this fraud and expect not to be found out. Why would anybody be so daring?

When I posted on my Facebook page and tagged Moomen that this must be embarrassing for him and his station, he responded with two comments that Fauster’s CV looked genuine on the net and that it was more than embarrassing (although he would later delete both comments from my post).

A commenter said ultimate responsibility lay at the doorstep of GBC and they could not be “absolved from this embarrassment” adding that “this is evidence of the lazy journalism that goes on these days.”

I don’t envy Moomen’s predicament, but unfortunately I cannot but agree with the comment. The producers and host should have done better!

THANKS BUKOM & POWERS

If you live in Ghana and have been over the last four months or so, you would have been sucked into the Bukom Banku and Ayittey Powers rivalry that ended up in public showmanship, religious bigotry and radio and television punditry. If you don’t, thanks to technology you may have caught glimpses of it.

The Ghanaian boxing community had been yearning for this fight over many years and then a young man who heads a boxing promoting company decided to let everybody have their curiosity satisfied: Can Ayittey Powers break Bukom Banku’s winning streak?

The gauntlet was dropped, the battle line was drawn and judgment night was declared for and by both set of boxers. There was not much money at stake (by the standards of global boxing), there was no title at stake but there was pride, bragging right and the question of whether it was Bukom or Korle Gonno where Powers lives which would go gay at the end was very much at stake.

Then it appeared as though the seventy-seven gods of Oguaa were bent on making it impossible for this fight to come on when out of nowhere, Powers, who had previously made it clear that Bukom Banku would “meet his ‘meeter’” in him and that he would beat him pound for pound, announced that his prophet had asked him to stay away from the fight although he would win if he did.

Many boxing enthusiasts and even those who know next to nothing about the sport got angry with the man with the bald patch and yellow coloured hair and by extension his “guru” for attempting to spoil the fun they were having and would be culminated on judgment night!

The public outcry over this publicly adjudged bogus decision by Powers jolted the boxing authorities to act and bring him to order. He therefore agreed to go into the fight and the date was changed to the 15th of May.

All was looking rosy after the rescheduling and we all looked towards D-day, but the gods had other ideas. Less than two weeks before the fight, the two protagonists granted a joint interview and demanded that the promoter increased their purse by 150 percent else they won’t fight. “What do these clowns disguised as boxers take us for,” someone was heard saying. That was resolved and the expectation continued.

Then when we were all set to hit the ring and fight, another disaster and spoiler alert was raised. This time the real gods of Accra were not going to allow the fight to take place lest the anticipated cacophonous melee from the stadium at Osu would destroy their sleep across the Supreme Court to Ga Mashie.

The gods may be asleep or resting around this period of ban on drumming and noise making but apparently, according to their custodians, they have very long and sharp ears that would stretch to Osu so the fight would have to be rescheduled.

@TheGHMediaGuru

• To be continued