The ace musician who sounded worried about the current state of the music industry told BEATWAVES in an interview last Friday in Accra that the elders of the Union have been sidelined by Obour and his cohorts who are rather inexperienced, heartless and do not have the welfare of the entire musicians at heart.
Jewel Ackah also hinted that Obour had failed to involve elders of the industry in their decision-making process, and stressed that “the root cause of the problems facing the Ghanaian musician today is bad leadership, that is what we are seeing at MUSIGA right now.”
According to him, Obour lacks better understanding of what he is doing and “as far as governing music is concerned, Obour has failed totally and has also failed to live up to expectation.”
Jewel Ackah, who described Obour as a wrong choice for MUSIGA presidency explained that Obour had created more harm to the Union than good “and most of the musicians are not happy with him.”
He stressed that there were several cracks including bad leadership in the Union, and it was high time the stakeholders came together to help find solutions to the numerous problems confronting the Union.
The ace musician continued that “the sad news is that musicians in Ghana today have no idea what they are due, several donors have been said to donate to musicians’ fund and nobody knows how much and how those monies have been disbursed.”
He also condemned the government for releasing the GH¢2 million (¢20 billion) budget allocation to the creative arts industry to MUSIGA instead of the Music Council of Ghana (MCG).
He said the circumstances under which the government released the money to MUSIGA alone was quite mysterious, especially when the Minister of Finance, in reading the budget statement, had stated that the money was meant for the creative arts industry.
He told BEATWAVES that the stakeholders in the creative arts industry were unhappy because they have not been properly informed about how the GH¢2 million money was expended.
He said the money that was given to MUSIGA was tax payers’ money, which he thinks should be accounted for.
“I believe Obour should be made to acount for the money because we don’t know how the money was used.”
On the issue of Ghana Music Right Organisation (GHAMRO), Jewel Ackah said he personally does not see anything wrong with them, “they are doing a very good job and we need to support them. Fighting will not solve our problems. We need to come together and work as a team to meet the challenges ahead.”
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