The representative of the MAMAs Best Francophone act category, Magali Palmira responded to New Bell Music’s press release as to why Jovi was absent for the MAMAs in Durban. culturebene.com published her response, in which she states that Jovi and his team did not give her any feedback after Jovi’s nomination. She says she had called them out on their lack of professionalism before, as this is not the first time. She mentioned that last year, upon the release of Jovi’s B.A.S.T.A.R.D video she tried to reach out to him and his management via several phone calls, so she could get the video and have it aired on MTV Base but to no avail. She even left her contacts at their disposal but she got no respond. She mentioned that she reached out to Jovi and Suljah(his manager) via whatsapp, and to Rachel Burks of New Bell Music via email for them to send Jovi’s biography and a High Definition photograph of him for the MAMA nominations but none of them responded, and that is why Jovi’s photograph on the MAMAs page is a picture sourced from the internet. She insists that contrary to what New Bell music’s press release states, she is not taking sides with any artists to dis-favour another. She mentioned that she is the one responsible for the artists nominated in the Best Francophone category and if she was taking sides she would have simply excluded Jovi’s name from the list. She said following Jovi’s open criticism of Stanley Enow on Twitter, she called out both of them(Jovi and Stanley) and reproached them for engaging in ridiculous battles. She insists that she reproached Stanley as much as she reproached Jovi and her message to them is that their major concern should be to raise the Cameroonian flag high. She said her colleague, Mélanie Trieegaardt, from whom New Bell Music claims to have received an invitation is solely incharge of programming, and she has no business with distributing invitations as that is the responsibility of Funk Productions. She concludes by saying that everything boils down to the fact that Jovi and his team did not give her any response despite several attempts to reach them. She shared screenshots of the messages she sent to them. See below:
