Unless you’re living under a rock, you would probably be aware of the Manasseh-Nana-Kwame brouhaha on social media.
The issue of the two went viral Nana Kwame commented on a post by award-winning JOY FM journalist, Manasseh Azure Awuni about the why the African CEO conference was held in Geneva and not in any African country.
He explained on Joy FM’s Super Morning Show Friday that hours after his post on Wednesday, he found out in church that the sarcastic comment had gathered more than 2,000 likes.
It had taken a life of its own as critics and hardliners against the investigative journalist rallied around Nana Kwame, grateful for what they saw as an opportunity to put the journalist in his place.
But Manasseh Azure in a response stressed that the trolling he has experienced is all part of the occupational hazards of a journalist.
He explained that his work as an investigative journalist has put people in jail, cost others their jobs and hurt politicians.
“It didn’t offend me. There were a lot of derogatory remarks. I am very used to that. Some people determine what they want to say even before they come to my FB page. I don’t have anything against him. He didn’t insult me. I just thought his argument was flawed. I believe he is just like me and I have a point to express to him, let me just do that…” he stated.
“Before the post, I visited the site of the forum. People are lying about the purpose of the forum. Everything about the forum was centered and had to do with the CEO’s in Africa. It’s not true it’s an opportunity to market African business…”
“The rate of attendance of the summit organized in Africa increased to about 35 percent. My question is if the Swiss company that organized the business brings it to Africa there would have been a lot of important benefits to that…”
But Nana Kwame, detailing why he chose to debunk Manasseh’s assertion was because he believed there was not a proper background lay out of the CEO of Africa’s conference to many of his followers, hence the reason he thinks Manasseh should have put the post in a better way that face the value he adopted.
He added that, social media is a vulnerable society as such people troll on whatever they believe to be true or not upon their first insight to a story, reason he believes readers of the post might right away attack the organizers of the conference the moment they read what Manasseh wrote without crosschecking.
“I was not trying to attack him in person per se. I was only trying to go into what he put there and I took it on the face value as he put it. Majority of his followers might not even know what the CEO of AFRICA’s conference is…”
“So he putting it like that will make people take it up and those who do not even understand the premising for organizing the program will think the organizers are at fault and didn’t much well to Africa. I drew my analogy and left it up there. It’s not like I wanted to attack him…” Nana Kwame stated.
According to Nana Kwame, he wasn’t much interested in his comment till he started to received many notifications which left him a bit baffled
“Honestly speaking I was not much interested in what was going on. I was quite surprised to see all these notifications. I thought people just wanted to use what I said for their own trolling. So when he replied the following day I was like, he should have let the matter be alone. For social media, that’s the fun.
He further maintained that he has mixed feelings towards receiving the fame his comment has given him as such he is not very happy about it. He believes Manasseh is a good friend and he respects him a lot to be happy about such.
From 48 friends, Nana Kwame says he now has 5,000 – the limit of friends possible on facebook. He said the issue is not about who is right but who gets the majority of social media support.
“I was having only 48 friends before. As I checked last night it was about 5000 plus with others pending. In a way, it may be that I am pleased. And it might not, that as due to my friend’s downfall that I shot up and I am not very happy about that…”
Source: Ghana/ Adomonline.com/ Dennis Kofi Adu
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