Thousands petition 8th AFRIMA to disqualify Brymo over “hate speech”

There have been thousands of calls for artist Brymo to be disqualified from the All Africa Music Awards (AFRIMA) due to his controversial comments toward the Igbo community.

The 8th annual AFRIMA awards ceremony, which celebrates and honors achievements in the African music business, will take place on January 15.

As part of the ‘Songwriter of the Year’ category, Brymo was up against nine other African artists.

The 36-year-offensive old’s tweet last week on the Igbo community sparked a firestorm of backlash on Twitter

Byrmo’s “hateful remarks against the Igbos” prompted Charles Ogundele to start a petition calling for the singer’s exclusion from the annual awards show.

In the petition titled ‘Stop Brymo from winning the All Africa Music Award for Song Writer of the Year’, Ogundele refers to the ‘Ara’ crooner as an “ethnic bigot”.

“Brymo recently put up a series of hateful messages on Twitter toward the Igbo tribe of Nigeria, going as far as retweeting a tweet that said that all Igbos are senseless. In one of his tweets, he wrote “fck omo Igbo”, which translates to “f*k the Igbo people,” it reads.

“His actions are ones which spark disunity and hatred in the multicultural nation that Nigeria is. Preventing him from winning the All Africa Music Award would send a strong message to him, and people like him, that he can’t get away with such blatant ethnic bigotry.”

As of the time of this report, more than 2500 people have signed the petition.

Paul Okoye had earlier taken a swipe at Brymo in a thinly-veiled message.