Ghanaian poet and playwright, Chief Moomen, has expressed worry over government’s huge indebtedness to his company.
He said government contracted him to show his ‘Wogbejeke’ theatre as part of activities to make Ghana’s 60th anniversary celebrations in March, and has since paid only half of the bill.
The poet lamented in a long Facebook post how all his several attempts to get government to pay the other half of the bill has proven futile, as a result of that his company is hit by financial recession.
Chief Moomen is appealing to Ghana@60 Planning Committee to clear the debt in order to resuscitate his dying business.
The Ghana@60 Planning Committee is chaired by Mr. Ken Amankwah and Deputy Chief of staff, Abu Jinapor as his deputy.
Please if anyone knows any powerful person in government please talk to the person to help me. I put up my Wogbejeke theatre show as part of activities to mark Ghana’s 60th anniversary celebrations in March and I have since been chasing for the other half of my payment.
The debts I incurred from my March shows have had a devastating effect on my small business. This is why we cancelled our show in April because we simply couldn’t afford to stage it with all those debts. The situation hasn’t changed and my much publicised show on 3rd July is in serious jeopardy if I don’t get money this Friday. The painful thing is that, I took a loan from my bank in February to rent a facility to start a business.
My debt situation in March made it difficult to further invest and start that business. Earlier this month, the loan was due and I had to scrape everything to pay it off without having it serve its purpose. This has further compounded my situation.
Now I am a couple of days away from a major show at the National Theatre and I don’t have a penny to even refresh my over 150 cast and crew who are currently rehearsing for the show. I used up my sponsorship money from Key Soap( God bless them for the support these past two years) to offset some of the debts. All efforts to appeal to the powers that be to understand how serious my situation is has yielded no results.
These past three months have been the most painful and frustrating moment in my professional career (I shall talk more about that someday). Now I need not less than 30,00ghc to make some urgent down payments to enable WogbeJeke to come off on Monday- ( payments for national theater, lights, sound, set, props, t&t for cast and crew and petty things just to get a show going.
I will think about the other bigger costs like remunerations later) I have even put up my car for sale (again!) but nothing yet. Rather uncharacteristic of me, I’m putting this very personal stuff in public because I’m really desperate now. And I don’t know what else to do. I don’t want to disappoint my cast and crew. I don’t want to disappoint my audience. Please help if you can”
Wogbe jeke is a theatre production by Chief Moomen that re-enacts Ghana’s pre-colonial histories to modern day times featuring the stories of kings, queens and legends amidst dance and music.
Chief Moomen is arguably one of the most recognized spoken word poets in Ghana whose performances are helping to ignite a popular interest in the genre. He has performed on various national, social, cultural, corporate and entertainment platforms over the past seven years.
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