President of the Musicians Union of Ghana, (MUSIGA), Bice Osei Kuffour, also known as Obour, has denied allegations of corruption and misappropriation of funds.
He has also condemned veteran highlife artiste, Gyedu-Blay Ambolley for being an ardent critic of his administration.
Obour in an interview with StarrFMonline.com said Ambolley started finding faults with the work of the current executives of the union after he lost the election to lead the group.
“For someone like Ambolley we have a lot of respect for him so when he talks we find it difficult to comment. It’s no news what he is saying but it’s getting old”, Obour said.
He added, “He contested me in the elections and he lost. He has been a critic ever since, so we will take his criticism in good faith and try and do things just to make sure that the lives of Musician are improved.”
Obour battled out against his seniors in the music industry – Gyedu-Blay Ambolley, Nana Tuffour and Willi Roi – in the 2011 elections in which Ambolley came third with 19 votes as against Obour’s 64 votes, which earned him the Presidency.
Ambolley, who had always complained about the new administrations’ “incompetence” accused MUSIGA of misapplying funds given to the Union by the government. He claims the executives are now covering up their deeds with certain activities.
He made his accusation on the STARR DRIVE with Bola Ray on Starr 103.5 fm on Wednesday.
Insisting he is doing what is in the best interest of the Union, Obour said they have invested the money into projects and are using part of it to build the Union into a brand that provides musicians with the right network and platforms to flourish.
“We ourselves have also created a brand that continuously brings money into the pockets of the musicians”.
He said they do a lot of artiste development programmes to build the capacity of members so they can succeed on their own.
He said the union is in “partnerships with banks and financial institutions who are able to give loans to musicians who have music projects. We have a partnership with Midland, an organisation that supports a lot of musicians to record their songs and also stage a lot of concerts and many of the musicians are benefiting from this.”
Obour added that although they welcome Ambolley’s observations, MUSIGA has a development plan that will not be altered based on Ambolley’s opinion on how things must run.
“He expresses his views and his views may be different from the over 4,000 members that we have to cater for so we cannot make Ambolley's views our plan.”
