The highs, lows and everything else about 2016 AMAA

The 2016 African Movie Academy Awards (AMAA) held on Saturday, June 11, 2016 in Port Harcourt and the event has made the entertainment headlines in Nigeria for a number of reasons.

The governor of the state Nyesom Wike and his wife Justice Eberechi Suzette Wike were in attendance and helped boost the ratings of the event.

Other dignitaries included local and international movie stars, entertainment personalities as well as Nigeria’s minister for Culture and Communication Alhaji Lai Mohammed.

The event took place at the Obi Wali International Conference Centre in Port Harcourt and was well attended.

Joke Silva and Oluy Jacobs at the 2016 AMAA in Port Harcourt. Credit: NAIJ.com

Though a stylish evening overall, the lapses at this year’s awards ceremony were highlighted as a result of poor planning, logistics issues and communication barriers. It was a bitter pill to swallow through the course of the ceremony.

The organizers at AMAA did the massive job of publicizing the awards show for almost a year since the 2015 edition, garnered guests, performers, men and women of the press to come witness so they’d have been expected to ‘break grounds’. But no, they never did.

It was one long, stressful outing for several reasons. And however much we try to empathize with the organizers, basic errors on the day just didn’t tell well of their efforts (if any).

Congrats to all the AMAA winners but shame on all d AMAA organizers. U really shld stop this event for now if u hv no plans 2 make it better

— Niyi Akinmolayan (@niyiakinmolayan) June 12, 2016

#AMAA2016 refused to evolve and here we are today.

— Alhaji Pablo (@femiTRIPP) June 11, 2016

In this light, some incidents on the night remain painfully unacceptable. For instance, there was power outage for over 15 minutes at the venue on the night of the event, a flawed audio output and an average stage presentation at best. Little wonder the guest was not carried along during several aspects of the awards night and failed to clap when due.

First of all! Why would you run a show on Nepa?? What happened to quality high standard generators? #AMAA2016LiveInPortHarcourt #AMAA2016 — Steven Chuks (@SteveChuks_) June 11, 2016

Hopefully the team at AMAA gets to understand the requirements, inner workings and magnitude of an award of this type, just so they get their acts right for the next edition.

Hopefully AMAA understands that they have a major competition in the Africa Magic Viewers’ Choice Awards (AMVCA) and sit up as due, because there’s only so many times they can flop like they have for some time. Lest we forget, in 2015 the organizers took guests and members of the press to South Africa for the awards ceremony and it was not exactly a ‘sold out’ show.

They should have given the contract to the producers of #AMVCAs to produce instead of this nonsense we’re seeing #AMAA2016LiveInPortHarcourt — #Unladecima (@franksdonald) June 11, 2016

Let’s be Frank’s it’s been over 10years yet the award show is bellow standard! No improvement #AMAA2016 #AMAA2016LiveInPortHarcourt — Steven Chuks (@SteveChuks_) June 11, 2016

It is important we put all of this in perspective so it becomes crystal clear where we need improvements as an entertainment industry in Nigerian because we are truly the continent’s biggest, most profiting and most followed showbiz industry. Hence, our awards show must be a total representation of these facts.

As we expect the desired changes in the aforementioned areas, below are some of the most thrilling moments of the AMAA 2016 in photos: