Dancehall artiste Stonebwoy was hoping that Ghana would get more than one nomination at the 2017 Black Entertainment Television (BET) Awards.
According to the artiste, who has been nominated for the awards this year, he believes that given the work that Ghanaian artistes had done, the country should have received more nominations.
The ‘Go Higher’ hit singer will be competing with Wizkid (Nigeria), Davido (Nigeria), Tekno (Nigeria), AKA (South Africa), Nasty C (South Africa), Mr Eazi (Nigeria), and Babes Wodumo (South Africa) for the award this year.
After winning the award at the 2015 edition, Stonebwoy expressed worry in a post on Instagram that Ghana received only a nomination in this year’s awards while Nigeria and South Africa have four and three nominations respectively because of the lack of unity in the industry.
Shortly after the nominees were announced, several persons took to social media platforms to troll Shatta Wale for missing out on the awards again this year.
Shatta Wale reacting to the nominations explained that he was not worried about missing out. In a series of posts on Twitter and Facebook, he asked his fans not to bother at all.
“I don’t want any fan of mine to feel bad about any BET…My skin is too strong now for such Nkwasias3m from this educated fools in our industry..” he said.
His comments received widespread condemnation from pundits and the general public who believed that Shatta Wale could have at least put their differences aside and congratulated Stonebwoy.
Born, Livingstone Etse Satekla, Stonebwoy told Doreen Andoh in an interview on Cosmopolitan Mix on Joy FM that he wasn’t surprised about his nomination but expected more for Ghana.
He said, “the way things were going, I felt that if we did get a nomination, I wouldn’t be surprised but I was only thinking that it was going to be more than a Ghanaian artiste, that I was sure about. My instincts were very sure that it was going to be more than one Ghanaian artiste but to our surprise,” it wasn’t so.
“This is what we do and sometimes when some good things come your way, you know that you deserve them. If you don’t deserve them, you know also. I know and I feel that I deserve it having won the first one, the first time I went there. The news came in… I was happy,” the Ashaiman-based artiste added.