“I’ve Not Seen My Daughter Smoking Before.

Nana Adwoa Awindor, mother of talented Ghanaian songstress Efya has debunked rumours that her daughter smokes stressing she has never seen her in the act before.

The music career of Efya, born Jane Awindor, has been rocked with series of controversies and allegations since hitting the limelight after emerging third in the maiden edition of the Stars of the Future music reality show in 2006.

Major among the controversies are allegations that she smokes and she is also into hard drugs but the mother, who is Development Queenmother of Afigya-Kwabre District, is urging Ghanaians to be circumspect in their judgement about her daughter.

According to her, it is not fair to concoct stories about her daughter with no evidence.

“You need to know, you need to see it, you need to appreciate it. If you don’t have the information you don’t go peddling it,” Nana Adwoa Awindor stressed.

She noted that, “I have not seen my daughter smoking before… so how can I go tell people she does? So if people haven’t seen it and I have asked a lot of people ‘ talking about it, if they’ve seen her do something like that before?’ If you say yes, then fine you have seen it, I haven’t so I don’t have to go peddling it.”

The host of the late television show Greetings From Abroad said Ghanaians should be protective rather “than destroy” people.

She revealed that, her daughter “is gifted. She is gifted from the onset she started singing publicly around two years when we used to give her microphones to sing at birthdays.”

The Queenmother said she has no qualms about her daughter’s musical career path noting that she absolutely supports her 100% in what she does. “Your job as a parent is to guide,” she added.

While admitting that stories about drugs is normal in the entertainment industry, Nana Adwoa Awindor observed that “I don’t think we should be doing that. Showbiz is for people to show what talent God has given them.”

“So if somebody dedicates his or her life to be in show business just to entertain us…we should be there for the people as well but within the show business you realise that there is competition there is so much of those squabbles and so some of the stories are created within…and of course our media loves [negative stories] and so sometimes they take it up and blow it beyond proportion,” she lamented.

She added that, considering the fact that the world is now a global village, Ghanaians should know that, Efya “is a young girl who has hit international [stage] so if we are talking about her and we are not careful and we are using our local squabbles to say ill things about her, we should be careful because this is somebody we are introducing and we have been able to push out there to represent Ghana in so many ways.”

Efya has several awards to her credit. She was adjudged Best Female Vocal Performance for the 2011, 2012, 2013 and 2014 editions of the Ghana Music Awards.

Source: JFM/Ghana.