Who Big Brother Naija really EP?

When the first season of Big Brother Africa premiered in 2003 I was unashamedly stuck, I couldn’t imagine 12 human beings living in a house with cameras everywhere just frolicking around and interacting with each other for my entertainment. To say the first Big Brother was explosive is a mild adjective, it was definitely filled with numerous controversies, from the shower hour which I hated and never watched, to the wild parties, to watching housemates engage in morally questionable acts it was definitely a rude shock especially for African countries who like to hide behind the conservative nature  of our  culture.

As the years went by personally I started losing interest, firstly because reality caught up with me I had bigger fish to fry than sit around all day watching individuals play around in a house and secondly I started questioning the  whole  premise on the show, and so after a few years I tapped out. I may catch the weekly highlights when it was on but I really started losing interest.

That was until the current show Big Brother Naija premiered on DSTV. Slowly this particular one began to win me over, I can’t even remember when I became interested in what they were selling but the drama this time around has got me a little bit intrigued.

I remember when the first Big Brother Nigeria aired, it was extremely captivating so I was a bit surprised when it took the producers 11 years to bring the franchise back. This one seemed to be drenched in endless controversy right from the first episode, This show now christened Big Brother Naija aired with some Nigerians screaming blue murder, querying why the Nigerian franchise would film the show in South Africa instead of Nigeria.

  

Helloooooo do you think they want to spend majority of their budget burning Diesel? The cost of producing a show of this magnitude in a country with epileptic power supply would be too much for the producers, besides my assumption is that they already had the space to design the Big Brother house since it may be the same location as the previous BBA , my thoughts though….. immediately they scaled that hurdle some people started questioning some of the content of the show, A group even went further to launch a petition calling for public signatures to demand that  the show  be taken off air , The most recent brouhaha is the disqualification of one of its contestants Kemen for inappropriately touching a female contestant, drama…drama…drama….the age old question filled my head Who Big Brother Naija really Ep?

Well after giving it a hard thought I have deduced that it depends on who you ask.

Fan or no Fan of the show you cannot deny its appeal to the younger generation and its place as a launching pad for entertainment acts.

Every week they meet up with celebrities who try to talk to them about the realities in the outside world and advise them on how to excel in their respective fields. Big brother also organizes different kind of games, quizzes and activities that have some form of educative view point but maybe that’s not enough for some people, maybe the kissing, fondling, nudity, and strong language that goes on in the house supersedes all this positive points I am trying to point out in this write up, If that is the case why bother watch its Rated 18+ so you already know it’s for mature audiences besides you could change the station.

“That does not help the young ones “you argue, “Celebrating promiscuity going on in the house will corrupt the young ones.”

That’s a good point but my view is take a good look around you, who do your children celebrate, mega star celebrities like Kim Kardashian and Beyonce are not known for running around in a nuns outfit preaching to your kids to cover up, it’s simply the reality of the day being sexy sells period. If we placed camera’s in our higher institutions most people would be shocked at the acts of our “dearly beloved undergraduates” so why are we acting like this is something alien to our society, it’s a fair argument to respond that this may be the case but it is worse off to air this on television to millions of audiences and wrap it up like the best thing to happen to the Nigerian entertainment industry but as I said it depends on your view point.

A lot of agitators may argue that the sexual assault that happened in the house over the weekend is enough grounds to support their view that the show is a bad influence on the public. Promoting unacceptable behaviors amongst our youths and foreign to our culture), But that incident forced out a conversation that is extremely necessary, the talk about sexual consent. I was surprised about the kind of comments viewers were exchanging on the incident, as a matter of fact today Big Brother Naija dedicated a whole show educating the housemates and the general public on the dangers and viewpoints of performing intimate acts on the opposite sex without consent. . (A separate topic will be posted to talk about SEXUAL CONSENT).

If we are being honest we need to ask ourselves what is the show really about? What do we hope to gain from sitting through hours of footage of 12 random people interacting in a well-furnished house, my answer is simple its pure entertainment, we take a mirror and look at young men and women from our communities slowly show us the lengths they will go and acts they will commit for fame and for twenty five million naira.

The back stabbing, lies, alleged adulterous advances, gossip, strategies, scheming all this bad mixed with the good presents a transparent picture that stares back at us through a looking glass (which is in this case happens to be our  television  set ) on the kind of youths that our society is breeding. A large number of the contestants are struggling artists, ripe with tales of suffering, hunger, poverty and determination struggling to make ends meet in an unforgiving landscape as ours, after an initial hesitant week of pretending you finally see the behind the façade of what a cross section of our youths look like. Sometimes it’s ugly, despicable, embarrassing, but sometimes its raw emotion, its humorous, its honest. If you don’t like what you see then look away, you can change the station but don’t be hypocritical.

Who Big Brother Naija really EP?

 Well no one it seems or maybe quite a lot, it depends on your perspective as for me I am still caught up with reality, treading this  waters in the real world trying to get that paper so I may not join the long queue of viewers glued to my TV set watching this show ,  but if people want to sit all day and watch people in a house interact , why not it makes for good entertainment and of course good blog content…winks