Daring ‘419’ at Ghana Music Awards - As VIP snap top prize

By Rebecca Kwei
Despite the tight security measures organisers adopted to check overcrowding at last Saturday’s MTN Ghana Music Awards by ensuring that ticket sales matched the number of seats available at the Dome, some cheats still managed to print and sell fake tickets.
Close to 100 fake tickets from punters were confiscated from patrons who had purchased them from a young man who is currently in custody at the Ministries Police Station in Accra while investigations go on.
This year’s cache seems to be the largest of all incidences of fake tickets impounded by Charterhouse security at any of their public events.
It will be recalled that Charterhouse, organisers of many other special events, had always been criticised for poor protocol management.
People who attended their events and faced difficulty finding seats accused Charterhouse of selling more tickets than there were seats.
Although Charterhouse had explained that no matter how hard they tried to put things in place, people always managed to beat the system by either coming in through the backstage or some unauthorised exit.
This year’s event, which took place at the Dome, a huge makeshift tent marquee set on the car park of the Accra International Conference Centre, saw yet another full house.
While efforts were made this year to stop people from entering the main hall through unauthorised routes and exits, a good number still managed to infiltrate using the fake tickets, perhaps, unknowingly.
“If you consider that our quota for paid VIP tickets was only 150 seats, the remaining seats in that area were reserved for nominees, award presenters and sponsors. You can begin to appreciate that we cannot afford to have even one seat unaccounted for. Someone would have bought an official ticket for that seat so anyone who takes up that one seat, with a fake ticket, causes a major problem for our protocol arrangements,” explained Ms Hedwig Quist, head of security and protocol for the event. 
“Now that the kingpin of ticket racketeering has been caught, perhaps, it will make our protocol work easier,” she added.
All that notwithstanding, the show took off to a flying start, kicking off with a brilliant performance from Sherifa Gunu, Bertha and Efya who did a medley of Osibisa tunes namely Welcome Home, Osa (Warrior Song) and Celebration which saw the legendary leader of Osibisa Teddy Osei himself joining the girls, and blowing his trumpet!
Teddy Osei received the Lifetime Achievement Award on behalf of Osibisa, and it was presented to him by the former Vice President of the International Federation of Musicians (FIM), Alhaji Sidiku Buari.
And so the performances and receiving of awards went on till the end of the night when the sensational boys from Nima, the group VIP (Vision In Progress), came up to receive the ‘Artiste of the Year’ award – their second time – having earlier picked up the one for  ‘Hiplife/Hiphop Artiste of the Year’ award.
MC for the night was the inimitable KKD!
Here’s the full list of winners for the night:
Artiste of the Year - VIP
Most Popular Song - 'Aha Ye De', Nana Boroo
Discovery - Herty Borngreat
Hip hop /Hiplife Song - 'Africa Girl' by Castro and Asamoah Gyan
Hip hop/Hiplife Artistes - VIP
Hip-hop Song - 'Get On the Dance Floor' D' Black
Gospel Song - 'Efunuba' Cecilia Marfo
Gospel Artiste - No Tribe
Highlife Song' – ‘Dadeanoma' Kwabena Kwabena
Highlife artiste - Kwabena Kwabena
Afro-Pop Song – ‘Kiss Your Hand’, R2Bees
Reggae Song - IWAN
Best Collaboration - 'Africa Girls', Castro and Asamoah Gyan
Best Rapper - Trigmatic
African Artiste - K'Naan
Record - Sammi B
Album – ‘CEO’, Samini  
Song Writer – ‘Efunuba’ by Pastor Boamah
Best Male Vocal Performance - KNii Lante
Best Female Vocal Performance - Efya
Producer - Zapp Mallet
World Bank Music for Development Award - Reggy Zippy, with GH¢3,000. All the other nominees took home GHC¢300. Abraham Ohene-Gyan of OM Studios took home GH¢5,000 for helping to promote 100 per cent indigenous Ghanaian music on his Fiesta TV platform.