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Okoye and Solidstar
A season of altercations loom in the entertainment industry as Peter Okoye of the P-Squrae engages soundcity TV in war of words, Chux Ohai writes
Two days after popular singer, Joshua Iniyezo, aka Solidstar, took a swipe at Nigerian entertainment awards in a statement posted on Twitter, a war of words broke out on the same social media platform between Peter Okoye of the P-Square musical group and Soundcity TV.
Okoye pulled the first punch on Thursday when, in response to a statement by a fan who seemed to wonder why the leading music Tv station had not been airing P-Square’s music videos, he had tweeted, “Don’t waste your time. They will not play them. Please keep watching Trace TV, MTVBase, HipTV and Afro pop.”
Addressing other fans of the P-Square on Twitter, he went on to ‘reveal’ why Soundcity TV had not been featuring works by the group on its menu. He said, “We see your complaints about the absence of our videos on Soundcity. Just to clear the air, they refused to play us.”
Okoye then called on the fans to ignore the station and to keep watching the group on other music channels.
A few minutes later, the management of Soundcity TV responded to Okoye’s outburst. In a statement posted on its website and titled, ‘What has Soundcity ever done for P-Square?’, the station explained why it stopped broadcasting the P-Square’s music videos since January, 2015.
The statement reads in part, “For 10 years, Soundcity TV has been a huge supporter of P-Square and the P-Square brand, right from their first music video to the last video released in 2014. Most of their videos got massive airplay on Soundcity TV than any other music channel.
“SoundcityTV viewers sometimes complain about the dominance of P-Square videos on the channel and charts. We were a huge supporter and gave everything to their works.
“We have assisted the P-Square brand, toured with them over Africa at our expense. We gave them ad-spots for their events and projects. We gave them prime time slots for their videos and included them in our array of programmes and programming.”
The statement claims that Soundcity had invited the P-Square to one of its annual events in December 2014 and the group insisted that they should be paid a certain amount of money as fee.
It says that despite the fact that Soundcity had invested a lot in the P-Square’s career as music talents, artistes and entertainers, the station asked to know what it could offer the group. But, in response to the request, Jude Okoye, manager of the group, had demanded to know what Soundcity had ever done for the music group.
Soundcity continued, “While we understand that this is business, there is also room for special consideration. Saying our TV brand has never done anything for P-Square was quite damning. Clearly, there was no need to argue with their decision and reasoning. We decided to stop ‘doing anything’ with and for P-Square, since our 10 years of supporting the group meant nothing to them. We assumed our relationship was a mutually beneficial one, but clearly one-sided.”
Admitting that it stopped airing music videos by the P-Square since January 01, 2015, the music TV station added, “Soundcity reserves the right to air music videos on our cable / satellite or terrestrial platforms. Overall, we wish the duo the best in their endeavours.”
From the foregoing, it is clear that money is at the root of the rift between the P-Square and Soundcity TV. Soundcity’s claim that the group demanded payment before performing in one of its events also draws attention to the nature of the relationship between music stars or groups and some music stations in the country.
In a previous development, Solidstar had in a statement posted on Twitter on Tuesday, described Nigerian entertainment awards as “jokes” that are available only to the highest bidder.
Apparently reacting to this year’s edition of the Nigerian Entertainment Awards event held in New York in the United States, the singer had tweeted, “All these highest famzer gets nominated and highest bidder wins awards. I don’t need your nominations know that I’m making good music.”
Over a dozen artistes were nominated for the awards in 39 categories spanning music, film, disc-jockeying and comedy by Nigerian music fans all over the world.
But Solidstar’s name did not appear on the list of nominees, which was done via online voting by music fans and he had decided to express his anger on Twitter.
Also, lamenting his absence from the list, he wrote, “Me without you is like Facebook without friends, Youtube without videos and Google with no results.”
Following the singer’s comments on Twitter, many fans questioned the credibility of the NEA event. Most of them wondered why the awards, originally intended to celebrate the best of Nigerian entertainment, had to be held in the US every year.
Some said the event would continue to suffer credibility problems unless the organisers decide to restructure it and to appoint a proper panel of judges to select the winners in the future.
However, others believed the awards were, to an extent, a true test of an artiste’s popularity among music fans and Solidstar’s failure to get nominated showed that he lacked much following.
This is the second time that a Nigerian music artiste has taken to Twitter to express his frustration and disappointment at not getting nominated for an award in one year. The last time, it was Burna Boy. But the latter did not castigate the organisers of the 2015 MTV Africa Music Awards for leaving him out of its nomination list.
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