Empress Gifty has added her voice to the long-running debate over sabotage in Ghana’s creative arts industry, recounting a personal ordeal she says she will never forget.
In a live TikTok broadcast, the gospel singer narrated how her first trip to the United Kingdom ended in humiliation and deportation after a fellow industry colleague, who had invited her, allegedly abandoned her at the airport. She withheld the person’s name but said the betrayal still stings.
“When I got to the airport, the immigration officers asked me who I was going to visit, and I mentioned the name. They then asked me if I had called the person before getting to the airport, and I told them yes. So they asked me to call her, but after calling her several times, the person refused to pick up my calls.
“The immigration officers started calling her from 6 AM to 4 PM, but my friend didn’t pick up my calls. They then took me to a room where there were a lot of cameras and everyone was even looking at me,” she said.
According to Gifty, her ex-husband reached out to then-Ghanaian Foreign Minister Hannah Tetteh in hopes of securing her entry, but even political intervention was unsuccessful.
“I called my ex-husband, and he called the then foreign minister, who was Hannah Tetteh. She even called the immigration officers to allow me to stay in my hotel room. But they refused. They were like, until the girl picks up the calls, they were not going to allow me to enter the UK,” she recalled.
She was deported back to Ghana the same day, with her two-year visa revoked less than a week after issuance. Gifty noted that her recent UK trip was intentionally made to silence those who mocked her over the incident.
“When their efforts were not proving fruitful, my husband called and asked them to return me to Ghana. The immigration officer spoiled my two-year visa that I had gotten within a week.”
Watch her statement below.
