African Magic Viewers Choice Awards is a fraud — Viewers

Critics have berated the organizers of the recently concluded African Magic Viewers Choice Awards (AMVCA) for including ‘BOUND’ which they described as a non-indigenous movie in the shortlist for the best Igbo movie award.
According to the Anambra state chairman of the Actors Guild of Nigeria, Leo Ewuzie, who said that the process which judges based on votes garnered, is structured in a way that does not bring out the best, unlike the Oscars award where professionals come together to select the best based on technicalities.
Mr Ewuzie furthermore stated that the movies that were submitted were the ones screened, as marketers do not always submit movies for awards.
Also speaking, a movie producer, Prince Paul Nwabuba said although he has not seen the movie, he does not subscribe to the idea of a movie which is not produced in indigenous language, winning an award meant for an indigenous language.
An analyst Mr Uche Agbo has labelled the award as a fraud, in a statement made by him, titled ‘AMVCA is fraud!!!’, Mr Agbo said
“I will keep singing it, until the organisers change their ways. I was there last night and I wasn’t happy. My particular concern is on Igbo CATEGORY.
This year, the award in this category went to Lilian Afegbai with the title “BOUND” a film with English title, and over 90% English. They barely even made a correct sentence in Igbo in it. An example of such Igbo is “Anyi a meet go before”. This could be best described as “Engli-Igbo” in Local parlance. Worst still it is just less than 10% of the entire movie.
To think that such movie shared same category with movies like “Ofuobi” “Ụwa n’eme Ntụgharị” “Oge Nkem” and “Ego Malaysia” makes it even harder to swallow.
My question therefore is, what qualifies an indigenous category? Isn’t it supposed to be language first? Isn’t the category supposed to encourage local languages?”
While speaking with viewers on the streets, our correspondent met a certain Amara Elo who said “I felt BOUND should have fitted perfectly in another category not Igbo category.”
Another viewer Onyinye Okafor said, “maybe we have done many good Igbo films but they need to showcase their movies on platforms like the AMVCA so movies like ‘BOUND’ don’t win in their category.”
A New York film academy trained movie director, Ogemdi Uduegbunam (Bishop) said: “any movie categorized as indigenous should be composed of 98% of the dialect of the tribe it is set on. Anything other than that violates the sense of inclusion of the indigenous people it is meant for”