Africa’s BET Palaver

First came the nominations and we were all happy, then came the invitation and we all jumped, then red carpet paparazzi, plush attention vis-à-vis the organizers of the BET awards knew what they were up to, then came the awarding of our own beloved Sarkodie from Ghana and Wizkid from Nigeria - all done backstage.

Tongues across Africa have wag in displeasure to the disrespectful manner at which African celebrities are treated. Much have been cried over but we cannot understand certain grounds used in stylishly undermining our stars.

When doing this, we noticed that the definition posed at the idea of the awards on Wikipedia states, ‘The BET Awards were established in 2001 by the Black Entertainment Television network to celebrate African Americans and other minorities in music…’ exactly the point we want to pass which is the organizers already know who and who they want to please invariably terming our celebrities as ‘minorities’.

Only our celebrities get to be awarded behind the scenes backstage and to add insult to injury they get to share the awards like , ‘birthday cake…’ in the words of the highly controversial Wanlov Kubolor who lambasted and lampooned BET via the social network Facebook.

Previous African celebrities have been ill treated and more also they have been given less attention at the events and without mooting words, the likes of Kojo Antwi, D’banj, 2Face and D-Black have been treated improperly. If the case may be otherwise we expect your reactions.

Our celebrities gladly accept them with fear and trembling when they visit Africa and even have to pay them handsomely to do collaborations with them. Our fans scream their heads off the ceiling because they perform songs our own celebrities can equally perform, yet they awfully celebrate us as nothing.

Again via twitter Wanlov Kubolor reminded us in his own words, ‘wen dey come to africa we raise den up… wen we go to america dey award us backstage like dogs’. This whole issue is like crying over spilt milk but one sits and questions that how come did they come together to nominated our celebrities? Because if they knew their worth back home then the organizers will understand the wise words as thus said, respect is reciprocal.