AMAA Saga: Country Director Offended by Gloria Sarfo’s Rant over Embarrassment
The Country Director of the Africa Movie Academy Awards (AMAA), Judith Oluwole Kuwornu has taken offence at the manner in which Ghanaian actress Gloria Sarfo went about with the inconvenience that characterized her supposed “all-expense” paid trip to Nigeria for the event last week.
She believes she could have appropriately gone about her grievances instead of casting a shadow on the scheme on social media.
Contrary to Gloria’s claims that she had not received any communication from the organizers, Judith said an apology has been sent to her.
“I have sent her a message of apology but she kept on doing this but that’s her problem. I mean we are different people from different backgrounds, where we come from and how we are trained. I’m sorry this happened. I’m also sorry that it’s going this way.
“Because [this is] somebody that is close to me and could not have communicated with me. ‘Judith, what happened?’ and all that. She never did that. All I saw was that she was going all over the place. But it’s okay, you know bad news is also sometimes good news. Maybe you are trying to reignite the face of AMAA for us in our own way. We take it like that,” she told Andy Dosty on November 5, 2024.
She indicated that some veterans from Ghana understood the situation.
Background
Gloria Sarfo took on organisers of the Africa Movie Academy Awards (AMAA) for deceiving her with a pseudo “all-expense ⁰paid trip” invitation to Nigeria for the event.
According to the Efiewura Star, she got bounced alongside some of Ghana’s bigwigs in the movie industry at the airport after finding out their names were not on the flight list to Nigeria contrary to communication from the organisers.
In a rant on social media on Sunday, two days after the incident which left them “embarrassed” and “stranded” for hours, she expressed her disappointment saying she sacrificed a lot to make it to the event only to face this ordeal.
She named Pascal Amanfo, Abdul Salam Mumuni, Akorfa Adjeani, and Julia Appiah among prominent producers who faced the same ordeal on November 1 at the airport.
To the best of her knowledge, this is not the first time such an incident has happened with AMAA and demanded answers to it.
“You don’t tell me you are inviting me with an all-expense paid trip and then I am stranded at the airport. It doesn’t work that way… The embarrassment. We stood at the airport for hours…It was embarrassing. Why would they do that?”
“People changed their monies in dollars and naira…I want to know, AMA Awards is 20 years. What is happening? Who is responsible? I think you should be ready to do what you do… You just don’t invite people to an event and you embarrass them like this. Totally embarrassed. Who does that?”
She also took offence at the organisers’ failure to reach out to them and apologise after the incident and called on her fellows in the industry to join in condemning it.
“If we don’t talk about these things in Ghana, if Ghanaians don’t come together to talk about these things, we will be walked on. They will walk on us all the time. We need to talk.. I wanted to keep quiet like everyone else but then I was like if I don’t talk who will? And these things will go on… I am still waiting for an apology letter. Up until now, no apology and no communication whatsoever.”
Source: opemsuo.com/Hajara Fuseini
