Reasons why Iyanya flopped at the vgma

Last Saturday, the annual Vodafone Ghana Music awards took place and as was the expectation, there was a long line of coveted musicians billed to perform.

Amongst them was Iyanya, the singer of the hit song ‘Kukere’. Iyanya is well known for his energetic and electrifying performances coupled with scantily dressed girls (dancers) shaking their ‘bum bum’ to an overly excited female crowd.

As such, I’ve never questioned Iyanya’s ability to move and shake the crowd; judging by his past performances at shows both home and abroad. I was expecting the ladies to be all over him as I had seen over and over again.

However a very surprising thing happened; Iyanya failed terribly to move the crowd. Tried as he did, the crowd remained impassive at his antics. The problem was not that Iyanya did not perform well; in fact he did everything possible to connect with the crowd but failed woefully. 

He danced, wriggled his waist, and even called out actress Yvonne Okoro to join him but the crowd remained unresponsive. It was just a few members of the audience that got up to dance to his tunes.

After thinking about what could have caused Iyanya to lose that much of support from his fans, I realised I should put together 3 key lessons I believe every musician including himself can learn

1. Clean up your public image: Sometimes it is not just about making hit songs, or showing off your 6 packs to the ladies. A lot of times, what the public thinks of you can go a long way to determine the success or otherwise of your career.

Last year, Iyanya was in the news for having dated Ghanaian actress Yvonne Nelson. The relationship however turned sour when Yvonne realised she was being ‘played’ by Iyanya. She later came out to share details of their relationship. And it didn’t help matters that Iyanya had a line in his song which stipulated that all he wanted from the actress was her waist.

Instantly Iyanya was labelled as a womaniser/Casanova. Even though at the time the news broke out, it increased his popularity, Iyanya is now infamous for his actions. At the awards show yesterday, he tried pulling out Yvonne Okoro to dance with him but she ignored him. I am sure she did not want to be associated with a known womaniser.

2. Change up your style: Watch any of Iyanya’s performances and one thing is very common: Scantily dressed dancers shaking their bodies in a very sexual manner. Initially, it can be interesting but it really does get tiring after sometime.

I could even predict his next dance move because it was the same style he was giving us again. Comparing to the other male musicians who also performed last night (Davido, Sarkodie etc) they were able to move the crowd without using female dancers dressed provocatively. It would be great to see Iyanya perform just raw music without sexualising women to get attention from the crowd.

3. Do not ride on your past glories: Iyanya performed 3 songs last night, and to be honest, these were songs that we had heard and seen him perform over and over again. ‘Kukere’ sure is a hit song but it has been out for some time now and I am sure it cannot compete with newer songs that were being performed by others. 

As a musician, there is an immense pressure to stay on top by releasing hit song after hit song because the industry is very competitive. When you don’t do that and you keep performing your old songs over and over again especially when the song is a club tune, you begin to lose out on your fans…

- See more at: http://graphic.com.gh/entertainment/music/22343-why-iyanya-flopped-at-vgma.html#sthash.W4q8m1EG.dpuf

Praye Tiatia is my love - Selly declares

Evicted Ghanaian housemate of the Big Brother Africa (BBA) Reality Show, Selorm Galley popular known as Selly has openly confessed her unflinching love for her boyfriend ‘Praye Tiatia’.

“I love Big J (Praye Tiatia) and we are not breaking up - we are even stronger together and I want to take this opportunity to say I thank him a lot for being my tower of strength - even before I return from South Africa people told him to dump me but he has been so supportive,” Selly said.

This is contrary to recent media report, which quoted her as saying she loved BBA housemate Nando and wished he would win the show.

There has been a gargantuan controversy around Selly and Nando following the latter’s confession that he and Selly had an affair in the house and Selly had infected him with a sexually transmitted disease (STD).

Selly told Adom News she never had sex with Nando and that both of them were tested and no such disease was found on her, so she suspects Nandon might have picked up the infection from a toilet seat.

“I have no STDs and I have a medical report to prove that” she stated emphatically.

She admitted to making out with Nando in the house, but denied there was penetration, adding that the controversy has strengthened her relationship with boyfriend Praye Tiatia aka ‘Big J’.

“Big J is the best guy I have ever known in my life because in the midst of all these confusion he was my strength. My friends in South Africa thought I was going to be crucified when I return to Ghana but Big J encouraged me to return and clear the air,” she said with pride.

Selly said she was very surprised at the media report linking her to Nando as lovers, and quoting her as saying she wants Nanado to win.

She said she actually wishes either Melvin or Elikem won the show and not Nando.

“I wonder why the media in my own country are so judgmental while their colleagues in South Africa have been so supportive of me,” she asked.

Meanwhile, boyfriend Big J is alleged to have said in another forum that whatever Selly did in the house was part of her game plan, but he does not believe she had an affair with Nando.

Selly is expected to travel to Nigeria come Wednesday for a movie shoot and she has promised to grant an exclusive interview live on Adom FM on her return.

Okyeame Kwame keeps up hepatitis fight

Sunday, July 28 is World Hepatitis Day and award-winning rapper, singer and songwriter Okyeame Kwame and his team at One Mic Entertainment as well as some sponsors, are working towards a week-long of events to create awareness about the disease.

There is a song on Okyeame’s The Clinic album called Hepatitis which won in the Music for Development category at last year’s Vodafone Ghana Music Awards (VGMA).

Hepatitis B is a viral disease which inflames the liver. According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), the prevalence rate for Hepatitis B in this country is 15 percent.

This means that one out of every six Ghanaians is exposed to the virus.

“I appeal to the print, electronic and online media to help sensitise and educate the public on the dangers of this disease,” Okyeame said in an interview with Showbiz.

Annica Nsiah-Apau, Business & Brands Development Manager at One Mic Entertainment, gave some details of the week-long of events to mark World Hepatitis Day.

“Okyeame and his team from MDS-Lancet Laboratories and MTN Ghana Foundation would meet the Minister for Health on Wednesday, July 24 for discussion on Hepatitis and the way forward in this country,” Annica said.

According to her, Okyeame and his team will visit children affected by Hepatitis in a hospital in Accra and make a presentation to them on Thursday, July 25.

A public screening from 10.00am to 5.00pm is scheduled for Saturday, July 27 at the Obra Spot in Accra where Okyeame will perform his Hepatitis song.

A special one-hour radio celebration of World Hepatitis Day is planned by One Mic Entertainment and its associates for Sunday, July 28.

The truth behind oil find in Ghana..Sam Jonah

I have followed with keen interest the news of a commercial oil find in Ghana and the optimism that it has engendered in the country. There is a welcome buoyancy in the mood of many Ghanaians as they look forward to being an oil-
producing country.

There are many people and institutions that deserve credit for the oil find — members of staff of the GNPC through to its present staff and of course to the public that patiently supported the difficult, protracted but unavoidable exploration effort. There is indeed enough credit to go round.

I cannot therefore help being disappointed that amidst all the celebrations, no mention is made of the pioneering role of Tsatsu Tsikata. When I compare the exciting prospects generated by the discovery with the state of affairs 20-odd years ago, I am reminded of the contrast between the situation of the mining sector before and after the implementation of the reforms of the mid-1980s.

I first joined the board of the Minerals Commission in September 1984. At that time, the mining sector was in a parlous state.

As a result of the work done by a few dedicated people under the leadership of Kofi Ansah, the sector was completely transformed in less than a decade. In the mining sector, we at least had the benefit of over 100 years of mining and considerable technical expertise.

The oil sector in the early 1980s did not enjoy any such stature.

I recall the scepticism with which prospects of Ghana finding oil in commercial quantities was greeted at the time. I remember in 1985, while on a trip to the U.S., asking a chief executive of one of the major oil companies why they were not showing interest in searching for oil in Ghana.

His response was that their geophysicists had told them that our geological structures were too tight and too badly faulted to host significant reservoirs.

Today, we know just how wrong those geophysicists were. One man who defied the prevailing scepticism of the time and, with a persistence bordering on stubbornness, led the efforts to get us where we are today, is Tsatsu Tsikata.

Indeed, when I shared with him, shortly after it was made, the observation by the chief executive of the oil major, Tsatsu’s response was: “Let’s all wait and see”.

Tsatsu led in the rethinking of petroleum sector policy. He led in crafting the petroleum (Exploration and Production) law that was the “investment code” for the oil sector. He led in drafting model exploration agreements including fiscal regime and Accounting Guide that is still state-of-the-art 20 years later.

He led in the development of a specific Petroleum Income Tax Law.

Beyond this intellectual and professional contribution Tsatsu emerged as a corporate leader — building GNPC itself from the ground up. His vision was sufficiently infectious to attract even hard-nosed oil men to work on Ghana’s potential, often with very little reward. However, it is in his identification, recruitment and promotion of local talent that Tsatsu truly excelled.

He was truly passionate about building the capacity of Ghanaian professionals in the sector. Companies and government’s that had dealings with GNPC were pressured into funding scholarships and providing or funding attachments for GNPC staff and even staff from related MDAs.

Tsatsu foresaw that this investment would in its own way be as valuable to Ghana as any oil find. And history has proved him right. Today, even before the first oil has flowed, Ghana has a solid cadre of industry professionals ready, given the opportunity, to lead us into the next phase of oil industry development. We have seasoned exploration geologists and geophysicists, drilling engineers, field development engineers.

We have specialised market and financial analysts and lawyers. In the late 1980s GNPC was already developing boat and helicopter services expertise for production operations. In the 1980s (20 years before the West African Gas Pipeline and before climate change became a global preoccupation), GNPC was training staff in the economics and management of natural gas.

Tsatsu was relentless, even obsessive, about the meticulous exploration of Ghana’s oil potential. He recognised that geological and geophysical data were essential preconditions for any serious effort to attract private capital into exploration efforts.

He thus focused GNPC’s meagre resources on an ambitious data project. GNPC scoured corporate and public archives around the world collecting geological and seismic materials, data and analysts from earlier exploration efforts.

GNPC then constructed the most complete database of seismic information about Ghana anywhere in the world. Then through a joint venture with the Norwegian state oil company, GNPC seismologists began to reprocess and re-analyse this data using new technology. Tsatsu did not stop with old data.

He worked with state oil companies from Canada (Petro-Canada International), Norway (Statoil) and Brazil (Petrobras) and Nigeria (NNPC’s seismic subsidiary) to acquire new data. Through these bilateral arrangements GNPC staff became familiar with modern technology such as “3-D” seismic surveys.

Eventually, Tsatsu persuaded these collaborators to support GNPC’s acquisition of the expensive computer technology to enable her Ghanaian explorationists to undertake much of this analysis in Ghana.

This in turn provided a platform for a massive upgrade of GNPC’s computer technology with positive impacts on all other sectors of its work and with distinct benefits for example for Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology.

It was the availability of this extensive database and the challenging analyses of old data by Ghanaian geophysicists working under Tsatsu that made Ghana such an attractive exploration destination in the mid-’80s despite earlier skepticism.

It was the ceaseless interpretation and re- interpretation of the GNPC’s growing geological and geophysical database inspired by and supervised by Tsatsu that identified many new prospects.

Tsatsu literally set the course of Ghana’s exploration drilling for an entire generation. Those who worked with him in the sector are in a better position than I to give further details.

But I saw enough to be able to say that his investment in institution building and in exploration have contributed immensely to the recent discoveries at Cape Three Points.

For the health of our nation, for the sake of posterity and the development of a culture that recognizes selfless and dedicated service, we must all acknowledge the immense contribution that Tsatsu made to the development of the petroleum sector.

It is not too late to do so.

Sam Jonah.

Make-up women love but men hate

Neon lips, blue eyeshadow, shimmering glitter, and golden bronzers: This spring, some of the most dramatic looks we saw on the runways are making their way onto our faces. But not everything we dabble on pleases everyone. We had a hunch that some of our biggest beauty obsessions might be turn-offs for guys...so we went ahead asked. Prepare yourself: brutal honesty ensues.

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1. Heavy foundation and powders: "The inch-thick powder is a huge turn-off," says Maxim senior editor Nick Leftley. "No guy wants to kiss a girl on the cheek and then find he¹s wearing foundation himself." A flaking face is one thing, but when your cheek becomes a palette of skin-tone colors, men pay attention...and not the good attention. "I'm always amazed to see women with two-tone faces, two apparently different shades of skin on the face, as if they apply makeup in the dark," says James Oliver Cury, the online editorial director at Maxim. "I'd rather see one greasy face than some sort of melanin imbalance. The nose should match the cheeks."

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2. "Bumps": “I never liked, or knew of any other guy who liked, the Gwen Stefani "bumpit" look," says Henry Belanger, an editor at The Good Men Project. "Be wary of anything that makes your head look unnaturally large."

3. Neon lipstick: Most of the fashion world agreed that electric pouts were a beauty "do" this season. Some men, however, beg to differ. "Orange lips are definitely a departure from what we're used to and not necessarily something a lot of guys I know really respond to just quite yet,” say fashion blogger John Januzzi of Lucky and the fashion website, Textbook.

4. Too-thin brows:"My pet peeve is overly plucked eyebrows," says David Swanson, Maxim's Features Editor."I mean, really? It's basically an advertisement that naturally you're hairier than Robin Williams. If it looks natural, we'd never have to wonder."

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5. Bold eye-shadow: "I don't understand the revival of bright blue eyeshadow," proposes Maxim's Cury. "Is it retro? Is it purposefully over-the-top? To my eyes, it just looks tacky no matter how you wear it." Lucky's Januzzi isn't as bothered by color as he is by application. "Smoky eyes--when done right are great--very sexy and attractive but when done wrong they look a total mess," he says. "Seek professional guidance before trying at home."

6. Rosy cheeks: “As far as make-up goes, I think rouge is for old ladies,” adds Good Men Project's Belanger. "I think guys generally prefer the kind of make-up you don't notice is there, and since there's a lot that guys don't notice I think women have a lot of leeway." 

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7. Two-toned lips:Remember Kim Mathers? She was almost as famous for her lip liner issues as she was for being defamed by Eminem. According to our dude survey, the pucker problem was more serious. "When I see thin lines drawn around a pair of lips, I think: Is this part of some gang initiation rite?" says Cury.

8. Glitter:"Women need to be judicious with it," says Cury. "It¹s like any good seasoning. You shouldn't shake it all over. It can overwhelm the main course." That being said, he's not opposed to a heavy sprinkle of cleavage glitter. Figures.

• by Piper Weiss, Shine Staff, on Mon May 2, 2011 12:53am PDT

Many killed in Ghana

The word cholera is from Greek word “kholera” which means diarrhea. Cholera is an infection of the small intestine that is bacterium Vibrio choleras. The main symptoms are profuse watery diarrhea and vomiting. Transmission is primarily through consuming contaminated drinking water or food.

Some slum dwellings as major sources of the high figures of the cholera outbreak in Ghana. Situation is so serious that people would have to avoid shaking hands at social gatherings, to be sure of not contracting the disease the speak of the disease  keeps worsening due to the negative actions of residents of Accra, temale, etc,  poor  sanitation  is  the major cause of the cholera outbreak.

The Ministry of Water Resources, Works and Housing should de-silt the storm drain at some places in Accra particularly the affected area, since the cholera situation keeps increasing over there. A cholera case has been discovered at Avenor,Nima, Achimota, Chokor etc since the residents live in kiosks and containers, and defecate into the drain. 

whiles most water bodies in urban centers are being destroyed by human activities which have created serious water shortage in the cities , there are also choked gutters  a lot of people do not have access to potable drinking water for consumption.

 People get diarrhea and vomiting and this can lead to rapid dehydration and electrolyte imbalance. The disease is caused by eating contaminated food hence eating cold food can lead to cholera. People should be educated to cover and warm their foods before eating. Parents should serve their kids with warm foods. Drinking any infected water and eating any foods washed in the water, as well as shellfish living in the affected waterway, can cause a person to contract an infection

 Cholera is rarely spread directly from person to person. Both toxic and nontoxic strains exist. Nontoxic strains can acquire toxicity through a temperate bacteriophage. People infected with cholera often have diarrhea, and if this highly liquid stool, colloquially referred to as "rice-water," contaminates water used by others, disease transmission may occur. When people particularly, in the villages that are affected with cholera defecate in waterways or groundwater or drinking water supplies they are likely to speak the disease.

Government should provide pipe bone water instead of encouraging the construction of boreholes. Little is done by the assemblies to protect the river bodies as they watch people dump refuse and human waste in the water bodies. Although cholera may be life-threatening, prevention of the disease is normally straightforward if proper sanitation practices are followed. Water should be treated before drinking and we should keep our sanitation clean all the time. When this is done cholera will no longer be a health threat.

Materials that come direct into contact with cholera victims such as clothing, bedding, etc should be properly sterilized by washing in hot water, or using chlorine bleach if possible, also hands that touch victims or their clothing, etc should be cleaned and disinfected with chlorinated water or other effective antimicrobial agents.

 In Ghana when it rains the water from the gutters enter the various water bodies we have and since this is where we get water for domestic purposes we should create a proper sewage system where we can encourage the use of antibacterial treatment of all general sewages by chlorine, ozone, ultraviolet light or other effective treatment before it enters the waterways or underground water supplies to help prevent undiagnosed patients from inadvertently spreading the disease.

 Additionally people should be educated on how they can treat water before using them. For example, boiling and chlorination.

Purification of water  used for drinking, cooking, washing, should be encourage, this can be done through, boiling, chlorination, antimicrobial filtration in should be done in any area cholera may be present.

Chlorination and boiling are often the least expensive and most effective means of halting transmission. Cloth filters, though very basic, have significantly reduced the occurrence of cholera when used in poor villages in Bangladesh that rely on untreated surface water. Better antimicrobial filters, like those present in advanced individual water treatment hiking kits, are most effective. Public health education and adherence to appropriate sanitation practices are of primary importance to help prevent and control transmission of cholera and other diseases.

In most cases, cholera can be successfully treated with oral dehydration therapy (ORT), which is highly effective, safe, and simple to administer. Rice-based solutions are preferred to glucose-based ones due to greater efficiency in severe cases with significant dehydration, intravenous dehydration may be necessary. Ringer's lactate is the preferred solution.

 The environmentalist advocating for stringent laws that will ensure that all water bodies in urban centers are protected other agencies should join the crusade.Kisseiman area, where most residents have connected pipelines from their homes into the main drain. Public Health Inspectorate should remove all pipelines connected to the main drain to help curb the epidemic. Not only in these areas but in other places too. They should construct proper drainage system

People, who defecate into the drain, should be dealt ruthlessly with when caught in the act. They should go to the hospital when they see any symptoms of diarrhea.