Lagos is no doubt the entertainment capital of Africa and with this, entertainment scene is fast becoming a toast to several investors all around Africa and beyond.
In recent years, the entertainment industry has witnessed more than dozens of awards from either industry bigwigs or an unknown individual desperate of fame.
The new entrant into the award business is UK based, Nigeria owned TV Station, BEN TV.
To herald the coming of the award, text messages were sent out to invited media houses through World PR executive as form of invitation to the media houses representatives.
Due to logistics errors, the organizers sent sms indicating that journalists should converge at Function Room 1 of the hotel while it was eventually held at Function Room 3.
The first surprise came when journalists were been accosted and embarrassed by the hotel attendants that the hall was not booked for a Press Conference but a lunch for another company.
It might also interest you to know that the weather wasn’t a friendly one on the Victoria Island on the said day, as there was a heavy downpour prompting most of the journalists to embark to Oriental Hotels early to avoid traffic delay.
Invited journalist came to the venue as early as 9am because of traffic and the cloudy weather so as not to delay the organizer.
Surprisingly, Bentv executives and their World PR consultants walk into the venue after over an hour patiently waiting inside the hall.
The event which was scheduled to kick off by 10am, started at exactly 11: 20am, keeping journalist that came from afar waiting for so long before its commencement.
ScetyGists source claimed that the Bentv Award was a pirated version of the HipHopWorld Award otherwise known as the ‘Headies’.
BEN TV which was started in 2003 by Dr Alistair Soyode is undoubtedly one of the biggest voices for black and ethnic oriented people in the diaspora however their contracting of a Lagos based Public Relations firm called ‘World PR’ has bought them an uncalled for controversy.
The World PR team which is headed by a certain Mrs Tayo Afolabi hired several ‘middle men’ to request the presence of Nigerian Journalist at a press conference.
SocietyGists.com revealed that the media firms who sent representatives to the press conference out of respect to BEN TV already knew it was a sham in progress as one NTA staff was overheard asking her Boss to call ‘his contact’ as the whole thing was just another ploy to sell a bleached image of an award ceremony that might be a huge failure.
Guests on the ‘high table’ included, Legendary DJ Jimmy Jatt, May7ven, Mr Lanre Ijaola, Regional Director(Africa) BEN TV, Femi Amusan (a BEN TV presenter), Mrs Tayo Afolabi (World PR), Mr Odion (World PR Staff). After reading from a terribly constructed press statement, Mrs Afolabi representing World PR who was contracted by BenTv failed to convince press men on the uniqueness of the award.
When a journalist asked about the uniqueness, difference and selling point of BEN TV Awards 2014 since there are dozens of entertainment awards in Nigeria already who always have problems with credible nominees list; World PR said they would be having a fantastic red carpet. Femi Amusan who was also on the ‘high table’ took over the microphone and reiterated that the red carpet would be the best ever witnessed and artistes will be the ones picking nominees.
DJ Jimmy Jatt who was probably embarrassed by their inability to sell the brand collected the microphone and explained that the nomination process will be fair and only people who are at the fore front of entertainment and other spheres, like sports and business will handle nominations as a blank list will be shared.
Mrs Tayo Afolabi then fumbled by going ahead to read again the press statement and called it a day.
Its few minutes to 1pm, a waiter strolled into the room with a trolley containing 6 meat-pies, 6 triangle cakes, biscuit, 12 bottles of coca cola, 2 red wine bottles and a jug of tea for the press men of about 20 personnel, who were in a haste to leave early.
Controversy started when a staff of World PR called a few journalists to the back of the BEN TV backdrop to offer them bribes of 10,000 each to write a favorable story.
A journalist who saw the whole thing raised an alarm and other journalists soon caught on.
Trouble escalated when a staff of World PR then refused to pay the ‘middle men’ an agreed sum for transportation fare for the journalists he contracted.
A journalist (name witheld) asked a staff of World PR (name witheld) why they are sharing money to specific people behind the BEN TV backdrop. The staff retorted that it wasn’t a bribe and it was just transport fare. The journalist then enquired, “If its not bribe, why not do it here in the open and why are you giving the money to specific journalists? Abi all of us trekked here?” to which Femi Amusan of BEN TV asked the journalist not to raise his voice and come closer to take his cut.
When our source contacted one of the journalists (names witheld on request), he said, “BEN TV goofed by hiring those people. They collected the money from BEN TV and arranged a sub-par meet and greet and called it a press conference. They don’t even know the importance of a first press briefing. To top it off, they called some journalist behind and gave them something. Yes, they shared money! They gave that ********* lady and ********** 10K each! Then two other guys went to meet that Afolabi woman and got theirs too. They asked for my ID Card so I can collect my own money but I didn’t bring mine so I left after coming all the way from Ikorodu.”
