TV3 Mentor winner Byno Ayoni disclosed distressing details of bullying and harassment inflicted upon him by his ex-record label, an African multimedia company, during his time on the show.
Ayoni recounted how the bullying commenced during his participation in the competition, despite having parted ways with the label a year earlier.
He described receiving derogatory comments during his performances, pinpointing them as originating from someone affiliated with his former label.
“When I performed, someone would come and write derogatory things about me in the comment section. When I saw it, because I’d been working with them for a time, I knew how they constructed their sentences and then I noticed it was one of them who was doing it.
“I reached out to Frika (a friend at the label) and I was like, ‘Bro, look at what they are doing.’ He said he spoke with the guy, and the guy denied it. But immediately I spoke to Frika, those comments stopped. After that, they started bullying me via WhatsApp,” he said.
The pressure from these incidents almost led him to withdraw from the competition, but the support and advice from his mentor, rapper Edem, encouraged him to stay.
He decided to focus solely on his performances, disregarding the social media attacks and refraining from retaliating.
“They bullied me to the point where I almost withdrew from the competition, but my mentor, Edem, said, ‘No, you’ve gone too far; you can’t leave the competition.’
“So I continued with the competition, and at that point, I had to go and forget my phone so that I could focus on what I was doing.
“Even while the social media bullying was going on, I would never post anything to respond to them or whatever. They kept going until a point where they felt that, ‘Okay, now he’s gone too far in the competition; there’s nothing we can do anymore’,” he added.
However, tensions reignited when Ayoni omitted to mention the label in a post-competition interview, despite their negative treatment towards him.