Charterhouse ready for VGMA 2020

Organisers of the Vodafone Ghana Music Awards (VGMA), Charterhouse, have given an assurance that everything is under control for this year’s edition of the most prestigious, scheme in the country.

After the brawl between the camps of Dancehall artistes Shatta Wale and Stonebwoy last year, which led to them being banned indefinitely from the scheme, there has been uncertainty about how this year’s would go, but the CEO of Charterhouse, Theresa Ayoade, said measures were being put into place to enhance the event.

At a media engagement at the Alisa Hotel, Accra on Thursday, January 23, Mrs Ayoade said, “Due to what happened, there have been a lot of talks about how to make this year’s an incident-free one.

“One of the major things that we are looking at is security, so patrons should bear with us when they come and we ask them to take off their shoes for checks. This is not to say we did not do that last year, we did, but what happened was a breach of security.

“As we all know, you may never know what will happen until it does, and this is a cue for us. Again, that is why we called the media here to discuss how we can make this year’s better for all of us. This will not be all; we have an industry players’ session where we will solicit ideas as to how to make things better as well so this year everything will be fine,” she said.

Commenting on the Shatta Wale-Stonebwoy incident and how it affected the VGMA brand, Mrs Ayoade said, “It was an unfortunate incident because prior to the show, we had dinner with all the top artistes briefing them on what to expect and how to conduct things and everyone was on the same page.

“It affected us because for years we have been knocking on doors to get sponsorship, so with the 20 years we gave it our all. We brought all manner of people to sell Ghana to them, to let them know that our event was worth investing in; however, everything went down the drain and that is just unfortunate.”
Speaking on the fate of Shatta Wale and Stonebwoy, the Public Events and Communications Manager at Charterhouse, Mr Robert Klah, said the board would decide on it. “We have a new board now and they will look into the matter and decide on what to do,” he stated.