WHAT ARE/IS THE CRITERIA FOR WINNING THE COVETED AFRICAN PLAYER OF THE YEAR ACCOLADE?

Africa is indeed a funny continent! And again the organizers of the Glo Caf Awards which was held in Lagos, Nigeria showed how funny, bias Africans can be. Adebayor African Player of the Year? Adebayor's triumph is clearly unacceptable and must be condemn in every quarter of the world.

I do now know the criterion for the awards but I can say the criterion needs to be looked out really with an eagle's eye and something done about it. When it got to the time for the African Player of the year award to announced, well meaning Africans or football lovers were anticipating for only one who stands out tall amongst the other nominee: Mohammed Aboutrika, this is a guy who won everything on the African continent so far as football is concerned, Aboutrika plays as a playmaker and attacking midfielder for Egyptian club Al-Ahly as well as the Egyptian national football team. He has been dubbed as the Egyptian Zinedine Zidane for his technical skill and excellent vision of the field.

He won the African champions league trophy with Egyptian club Al-Ahly, Adebayor didn't reach even the semi finals with arsenal in the UEFA champion's league.

He won the African Cup of Nation's trophy with the Egyptian national team and he scored that winning goal to hand the trophy to the Egyptians. Adebayor with his Togo team didn't even qualify for the 2008 tournament in Ghana.

He again won the African Super Cup, where Adebayor can only dream of, in a nutshell Aboutrika won every cup in Africa in 2008, Adebayor didn't even win a ''latrine container'', so why this favouritism in Africa?

Why is Africans bias in everything they do?

Adebayor triumph raises more concerns about the fairness of the awards. So is this why Issah Hayatou wants to be president of FIFA, when he has not put his house in order? CAF and the organizers are fraudsters.

HIP LIFE IS IMMORAL - EKOW MICAH

One of Ghanaian's ace a reggae artiste Ekow Micah says hip life is immoral, nonsense and needs to be scrap from the music industry in Ghana. The famous musicians with dreadlocks made the statement when he was been interviewed by Borla Ray, a co host on Music Music, TV3's number one entertainment music program in Ghana now.

'Music Music' is the biggest entertainment program in Ghana now and it comes off, every Saturday at Studio B with lots of fans. The new face of Music Music which started in September 2007 and it features 4 new set of artistes for each month, the public is given the chance to vote for their favourite artiste via MTN short code 1449 and at the end of the month, the votes are collated and a winner goes home with exciting prizes. The artistes for November are reggae musician Shasha Marley of Mata fame, Ekow Micah, Tinny, Kokovelli.

According to the ace reggae artiste, hip life is a complete waste and it should be scrap with immediate effect. He continued by saying hip life brings enmity between the artistes, create the unnecessary tension. Ekow, in a chat with the host of the program says he belongs to the rasta family, because he is a rastaman and believes in liberating Africa through his music and his latest album ‘Liberate Africa", which is yet to be launched in Holland says it all.

He moved from highlife to 'root life' and has been in the music industry for about 20 years believes that letting people know that the tragedy of Africa keeps worsening each day. Even though most African countries have attained independence, it is a Mickey Mouse independence because we are not free. So we express our dissatisfaction through music and to him Rastafarians in Ghana have the vision to do so many things but hip life is drawing the country behind.

Ekow really touched on something which really went down well with the people he said "every music should have a meaning, inspire, entice and strengthen an individual in the battlefields of life and its certainly not hip life which turns to protect alcoholism, womansing, immorality."

He said Ghanaian music is not making waves in the international scene because most of the music are in local dialects which people do not understand. Micah reiterated that, "hip life music is full of moral corruption, this means that most of the lyrics are profane and the words do not have any positive impact on people, neither does it inspire them to do positive things in life."

Here I concur with Ekow because the Nigeria musicians are fast taking our music industry by the fact that they sing in English, which the people understands. Well hiplife is mostly for school drop outs and most of them are qualify illiterates and they are bereft of lyrics.

If not why do some of them just insult and diss other people to sell their one hit album when there are thousand and one issues that they can tackle with their music, for example: payola, piracy, HIV/AIDS, child labour, rape, child abuse, and the advocacy by the chairman of the Ghana Aids Commission that prostitution should be legalize.

Why do most hip life instead go about buying and stealing already made music? Is it because they are illiterates, who can pen down their own lyrics? – what a shame. You listen to some of their lyrics and my God you go like what is this. However, I recently discovered that most of the people who are involve in this practice are new to the game who may have managed to get one hit track from their one and single album.

What a world of fantasy they find themselves in with their dissing and insulting lyrics. Now the big question is that will they insult and diss if they have something important to talk about? Do you think hip life should be banned?

Finally Ekow Micah has this to say “The beginning of everything is difficult but with punctuality, we will definitely get there, the future looks bleak for hip life and something urgently needs to be done”.

Can hip life be really scrapped? Is hip life all about womanizing? Is it all about drugs? This reporter tried to hook up with the originator of hip life, to respond on some of the allegations but it proves futile.

Ekow attended Premier International Preparatory and later attended a Music school. He has about ten albums to his credit. Some of his albums are Ashanti Reggae, Nasaye Wayefe, Masiwa Hemaa, Odo Kasa, 95 Cedis amongst others.

Still on the show, Shasha Marley, a reggae musician commenced as he managed to score a breakthrough over the Studio audience. Followed was Tinny, a hip life artiste. He brought a different atmosphere which was also acknowledged by all. Tinny known by his fans as 'AletseKanpke' managed to score a breakthrough with his Ga lyrics.

Then came Kokoveli, hip life artiste who also set the stage on fire. It all ended well as Ekow Micah, a reggae artiste with took turns. It was all fun as audience were standing and singing alongside each artiste.

Ebenezer Anangfio Jnr. www.ghanalounge.co.uk