BEN TV, World PR In Bribery Scandal Over Award Ceremony ...All the Messy Details Inclusive

Tayo Afolabi

Entertainment industry is often considered to be one of the most interesting and exciting industries in which to work. And entertainment is a form of activity that holds the attention and interest of an audience, or gives pleasure and delight.

Lagos can be referred to as the entertainment capital of Africa and it's fast becoming a toast to several investors all around Africa and beyond.
In recent years, the entertainment industry has witnessed more than dozens of awards from either industry bigwigs or an unknown individual desperate of fame.

The new entrant into the award business is UK based, Nigeria owned TV Station, BEN TV.
To herald the coming of the award, text messages were sent out to invited media houses through World PR executive as form of invitation to the media houses representatives.
Due to logistics errors, the organizers sent sms indicating that journalists should converge at Function Room 1 of the hotel while it was eventually held at Function Room 3.

The first surprise came when journalists were been accosted and embarrassed by the hotel attendants that the hall was not booked for a Press Conference but a lunch for another company.
It might also interest you to know that the weather wasn’t a friendly one on the Victoria Island on the said day, as there was a heavy downpour prompting most of the journalists to embark to Oriental Hotels early to avoid traffic delay.

Invited journalist came to the venue as early as 9am because of traffic and the cloudy weather so as not to delay the organizer.
Surprisingly, Bentv executives and their World PR consultants walk into the venue after over an hour patiently waiting inside the hall.
The event which was scheduled to kick off by 10am, started at exactly 11: 20am, keeping journalist that came from afar waiting for so long before its commencement.

SocietyGists report that the Bentv Award was a pirated version of the HipHopWorld Award otherwise known as the ‘Headies’.
BEN TV which was started in 2003 by Dr Alistair Soyode is undoubtedly one of the biggest voices for black and ethnic oriented people in the diaspora however their contracting of a Lagos based Public Relations firm called ‘World PR’ has bought them an uncalled for controversy.

The World PR team which is headed by a certain Mrs Tayo Afolabi hired several ‘middle men’ to request the presence of Nigerian Journalist at a press conference.
SocietyGists.com revealed that the media firms who sent representatives to the press conference out of respect to BEN TV already knew it was a sham in progress as one NTA staff was overheard asking her Boss to call ‘his contact’ as the whole thing was just another ploy to sell a bleached image of an award ceremony that might be a huge failure.