Why Patapaa lost ‘Song of the Year’ award to Fancy Gadam

The 2018 Vodafone Ghana Music Awards (VGMA) was held at the Accra International Conference Centre with late dancehall act, Ebony winning the topmost award as the artiste of the year.

Tamale based hiplife artiste, Ahmed Mujahid Bello popularly known in the showbiz circles as Fancy Gadam won the song of the year and the Hiplife song of the year with his “Total Cheat” tune.

After the awards ceremony, many on social media have chastised organisers of the prestigious award event of cheating Patapaa as they believe his ‘one corner’ hit song deserved to win the song of the year award ahead of “Total Cheat” by Fancy Gadam.

However, according to the voting process and mechanism for winning song of the year award proves Fancy Gadam won due to massive public votes that went to his favour since the criteria for winning that award is purely public voting.

Here are the VOTING MECHANISMS for various categories at the VGMA;

The VGMA maintains the 3 tier voting system, that is, the Public, the VGMA Academy and the VGMA Board with the various percentage splits

Song of the year is wont by 100% Public voting.



Public Voting Awards: Public – 40%, VGMA Academy – 30% and VGMA Board – 30%

Industry Voting Categories is determined by VGMA Academy- 50% and VGMA Board -50%.

Honorary Awards is strictly decided by the VGMA Board – 100%