Fred Nuamah, the Chief Executive Officer of the Ghana Movie Awards, has explained why this year’s ceremony suffered low publicity.

He told Joy FM’s entertainment journalist, Kwame Dadzie, in an interview on Showbiz A-Z that the organizers decided to invite only people in the industry because of security reasons.

According to him, the Accra International Conference Centre, which was chosen as the venue for the event, had also been selected as the office for the government’s transition team, which required that they needed not to make too much noise about it.

“It is a bit political. Unfortunately for us, when we started, we didn’t know the government would use the Accra International Conference Centre as their transition office. Secondly, we also didn’t know they were going to use the place as their seat of government, so there was a bit of restriction on us,” he said.

Asked how this affected the publicity of the event, he said, “It affected it because we didn’t bring a lot of people to the event, so we decided to go quiet and concentrate only on the industry.”

Fred indicated that usually, he does billboards, television ads, and other promotions, “but because we wanted to limit it to a few people, we decided to go low-key.”

He also said he could not get a different venue within that period because they “wanted a theatre setting.”

“We didn’t want a dinner setting, so we decided to go for the theatre one,” he noted.

The programme has come under criticism for poor organization.

Another issue that came up after the award ceremony was the presentation of locally made fans (called papa in Twi) to some of the winners.

The fan plaques have a wooden base with inscriptions and a painting of Ghana’s red, gold, green, and the black star on the fan.

“Personally, I was okay with it, because it was made in Ghana, so I was okay, until people started complaining about it. I went back to the team and told them if you are giving something to people and they seem not to like it, it’s okay. They are golden, so maybe they want something golden,” he stated.

He has therefore stated that the Ghana Movie Awards is saddled with financial difficulties and hopes that most of their problems will be solved if they get more assistance.