BET Awards: African complaints of unfair treatment are a show of hypocrisy

The BET awards have raised a lot of storm and generated a huge amount of controversy. In the US, they picked Kendrick Lamar over J Cole. In Africa, they chose Stonebwoy over Nigeria’s darling Yemi Alade, and in the UK, Fuse ODG lost out to Stormzy.

First, all’s fair with non-voting awards. The honors are appropriated by an undisclosed group of people who sit in communion, go over certain secret metrics, yardsticks, and criteria, before announcing nominees, and later, deciding the awards.

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Yemi Alade isn't happy about the treatment of African stars at the BET awards.

 (Instagram)

A huge number of mitigating factors come into play in this system, and not all of them are fair, or represent the best of influences. The BET does not own a scientific system that collates trusted empirical data, such as album sales, artiste revenue, streaming statistics, and many others.

They simply choose, based on flawed knowledge and congeniality.

Choosing is not the fairest ways to determine a winner of a competition. The person or group who get to make the call, will have to deal with a number of biases, innate partiality, personal tastes, conflicting influences and the worst of all: pettiness.

Throw all of these together, and you will never have a fair award. Or anything close to it.

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Fuse ODG has won many awards during his career, including the prestigious MOBO.

 (MOBO)

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Fuse lost this year's Best International Act – UK award to another UK-based Ghanaian, Stormzy.

 (Press)

But then it is easy to complain when things don’t go your way. If Yemi Alade had been put through the panel of judges, and found favour, she wouldn’t be on social media with a strong voice against activism. She would have practically done cartwheels to Los Angeles, and received her award backstage, splash images on social media, send glowing press releases and cue in the praise from fans.

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Yemi Alade has cried out against the treatment of African stars at the BET awards.

 (Pulse)

A classic example of this, was when Wizkid won the gig in 2012. In all fairness, he declined the backstage invitation to receive his award, but he turned up in LA for interviews and preshow parties.

Ice Prince received the nod in 2013, and he arrived at the event wearing the American flag, and posing for professional photos. Many were even expecting him to break into a special Afro rendition of the ‘Star Spangled Banner’. Davido also made a meal out of it in 2014.

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Wizkid won the BET Awards in 2012, Ice Prince also received the gong in 2013.

 (Instagram)

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Ice Prince received his 2013 award...at the pre-show.

 (Notjustok)

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Davido won the BET awards in 2014. He made a meal of the honor.

It is easy to use the wisdom afforded to us by hindsight to scream activism and be vocal about treatment of artistes and poor handling of non-US stars. But has any winner ever complained while the lights were shining on him? Fat NO!

Then there’s the issue of the TV ratings system. The BET awards is streamed to millions of viewers on TV whose behaviour gives feedback which translates to either a positive or negative rating as determined by the defective but functional Nielsen ratings.

A good rating means the program is being viewed by many people who find it interesting, and so would be converted by the organizers of the BET for commercial monetization. In all honesty, America would rather see Kendrick Lamar and Nicki Minaj, come onstage to receive awards. They really don’t want Stonebwoy on their screens.

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Stonebwoy won the 2015 BET award for Best International Act - Africa. He has no complaints. 

(Instagram)

If that happens, they lose a certain amount of viewers, which will affect their ratings, and subsequently, their money. Sentiments don’t count here. It’s just business, no hard feelings. No compromise has been found for this, and for the unforeseeable future, none would come.

The African acts who feel disrespected by this can choose to reject the awards, or public denounce the nomination, as a coup for equal rights and fair recognition.

But they don’t. Only the losers complain, and that is a worse evil than maltreatment. It’s called hypocrisy.