Stop the social media war – Tourism Minister to Stonebwoy, Shatta fans

Ghana’s Minister of Tourism, Culture and Creative Arts Mrs. Barbara Oteng-Gyasi has called on the fans of reggae/dancehall artistes Stonebwoy and Shatta Wale to stop the social media war as that fuels the rivalry between the two artistes.

Her comment follows the clash between the two artistes at the just-ended Vodafone Ghana Music Awards held on Saturday, 18 May 2019 at the Accra International Conference Centre.

The confusion happened when Stonebwoy was announced as the Reggae Dancehall Artiste of the Year.

Shatta Wale and his fans approached the podium to, ostensibly 'congratulate' Stonebwoy, but events turned chaotic resulting in a lot of pushing and shoving – a situation that prompted Stonebwoy to pull out his pistol.

The security officers at the event pepper-sprayed the stage in an attempt to prevent a full-blown fight.

The two award-winning artistes were on Sunday afternoon invited by the Accra Regional Police Command and detained.

Speaking about the fracas on the Executive Breakfast Show (EBS) on Class91.3FM on Monday, 20 May 2019, Mrs Oteng-Gyasi, who was also at the awards event when the violence broke out, said the ministry will engage the two artistes to resolve the feud between them.

She said: “The music industry is growing and the government is taking steps to support it and make it better for industry practitioners for it to feed into the agenda of His Excellency.

“This was unfortunate, it shouldn’t have happened but it has happened and I will like to urge the fans of the two artistes who were involved in the incident to calm down and let’s cease-fire on social media. I believe that is what generated the incident in the first place. The engagement on social media leading to the event was not good.

“On the part of the ministry and the organisers, on hindsight, we should have engaged the two artistes prior to the event having witnessed what was going on in social media. This has happened and we are going to engage them together with MUSIGA to ensure that we resolve whatever underlying issue that is there so that we don’t have an escalation going forward into the future.”