Omah Lay and Tems Arrest Has Brought No Glory

The arrest of Omah Lay and Tems was a vain attempt to calm down the anger wrought by a blatant dis-respect of Ugandan Artists. According to most of them, there should never have been any event rather than a virtual event.

For starters, let's state some facts before moving on to opinion;

There is a prevailing restriction on public events which draw big crowds. This restriction was effected in March 2020 to curb the spread of Covid19. Any event organiser would know this.

Secondly, dozens of Uganda's entertainment events were cancelled because of this restriction, others have been held online, while a handful are freely held for unknown reasons.

Thirdly, no concert can go unnoticed by security authorities especially in Kampala, because there is paperwork to be filled and cleared while security personnel have to be deployed for obvious reasons -to maintain law and order.

Lastly, most artists in Uganda depend on concerts, therefore without concerts there are no earnings. Many are currently struggling financially.

Moving on to opinion, these restrictions are selectively enforced. Some parts of the entertainment industry are on lockdown, while others are left to carry on freely.

Unfortunately this is what happened with the "The Big Brunch" concert featuring Omah Lay and Tems.

There was an expectation that Ugandan artists would just look the other way as had been the case many times before, but there was one problem -this event was unique, the featured artists were not Ugandan and were also a representation of Nigerian competition, a popularity contest that Ugandan artists are currently struggling with.

There was a time when Ugandan music struggled with Congolese and Western music, this war was won, because eventually over 70% of airplay was returned to Ugandan music.

Then came the wave of Afro-Beats. Because of its captivating nature, Nigerian music which is dominated by Afro-Beats again captured most of the airplay.

Already there is a war between artists against disc jockeys (Djs) and other media outlets, because the latter are allowing Nigerian Afro-beats to dominate Ugandan content.

In such an environment, hosting such a concert couldn't have been worse. Given the selective application of the restrictions on entertainment events and the artists' current struggles, this particular concert struck a nerve.

Ugandan entertainers exploded and took to social media to vent their dissappointment with how foreign artists got a go ahead to hold a successful concert while they were still under restriction.

The selective application of restrictions burst in the Ugandan authorities' face, a back up plan had to come to play. This plan involved arresting the visiting artists.

According to some sources, this arrest was meant to just be a photo op, a means to show that the authorities felt the pain of the disgruntled, owing to the current political environment in the country. The said artists had reportedly not taken it seriously, but the backlash got worse, and the photo op got a dash of reality.

A war was launched between Ugandan and Nigerian netizens. Each side blamed the other for this misfortune.

Others demanded for the duo's release. Many artists lent their voice in this war, many have muddied their public image.

This situation brought no glory, the party goers may have contracted Covid19 while musically, there are more casualities than we currently realise, especially for Uganda, which is set to host the 2021 MTV Africa Music Awards.

Nigeria too has has got a few bruises here and there. Some artists declared that they would not perform in Uganda again, some are suggesting a boycot of the MAMAs, etcetera.

This is detrimental to the success of African music, but we fancy preaching pan-Africanism.

Now that the duo have been released and are out of the woods, will the music and entertainment relations between Uganda and Nigeria be the same again? You may be the judge of that.

Otherwise I choose reconciliation because in reality no one is innocent, but believe it or not, we need each other.

Nigerian music may be good, but it needs an audience, Uganda is one of the biggest consumers of Nigerian music, even against the wishes of their own.

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