A pie-chart showing the ongoing voting voting Illustration By JULIUS BYAMUKAMA
The first edition of Western Uganda Music Awards (WUMA) nominations which kicked off earlier this week has faced criticism from different music pundits in the region. According to music stakeholders and music analysts, nominations of different categories were unfair and imbalanced.
Councilor Amon 256 a music analyst and blogger from Western Media online TV says there were irregularities in the way nominations were made urging that some bit of corrections should be done.
“We have learned that Indians and Pakistanis are the ones investing in these WUMA awards, the people they used to help them spot talents on grounds made mistakes in categories on nominations for example how can you nominate an emcee with a comedian, how can you nominate Shine Omukiga as a female artist of the year yet she has spent 2 years without singing,” said Mr Amon.
He added that the spellings of the names were incorrect.
Daniel Ayebare MVP Radio West Music director says one cannot put a long list of nominees adding that this devalues the meaning of some categories.
“Awards are good because they motivate people to work hard and they bring in a competitive attitude amongst people, however, you can’t organise awards and put all musicians on the nomination list as if it is a soccer lineup. To create value, they should have had limited nominations and make 4 or 5 nominees for each,” said Mr Ayebare.
“Some people have been put in categories where they are not supposed to be and even the organisers did not make research on the people that were nominated, whoever organised these awards should have sensitized people on the essence of the awards,” he added.
Derick Otim the WUMA organizing manager
However Mr Derick Otim the WUMA organizing manager says the WUMA nominations were made by regional fans noting that there is no favoritism or unfairness in the process.
“It is the fans that nominated their favorite personalities in those categories, our system had to sieve, if one is nominated by 10-15 people that means that the person is automatically put in the voting system,” said Mr Otim.
He added “We want it to be a free and fair election, we have made our systems very clear that one can only vote once. These awards will help the youth in uplifting their talents as they will act as a motivating factor.”
According to WUMA officials, Kasese has registered over 1500 voter turn up, Fort Portal 3500, and Mbarara with over 5000 voters turn up. The online votes will take 60 percent of the final result, and other aspects like stage performance and branding will take 40 percent.
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