With what’d they brew BBNaija?

Season Four edition of reality television show, Big Brother Nigeria (BBNaija), came to a sweltering climax early last week with Mercy Eke topping the pack of 26 housemates at the starting line when the house opened 99 days earlier. The 26-year-old, who made history as the first female winner of the show, edged out four other finalists to net the N30million cash award and other prizes totalling N30million more.

Show host, Ebuka Obi-Uchendu, said viewers thumbed in more than 250million votes during the season, of which the final week of the show alone harvested over 50million votes. Subsequent reports estimated that BBNaija voters must have doled out a cumulative N7.2billion on their participation, considering that it cost 30 naira to cast a vote.

The viewership size commanded by the show was another factor. Even though this country yet lacks capacity for instant measurement with statistical accuracy of viewership numbers attracted by an item on television, there is little doubt concerning the sheer magnetic pull the BBNaija show exerted on viewers – if at no other time, during the grand finale. Some personal experiences of mine were instructive in this regard. I recall that most houses in my neighbourhood left their generators running despite availability of public power supply, apparently so as not to miss a moment of the show in the event that public power fails. I also remember putting a call through to my daughter in her school outside of Lagos while the show was underway and she failed to pick her phone. Sometime later when she returned the call, I inquired where she had been and she responded quite petulantly (like I should’ve known without being told) that the entire university community was in the Common Room watching the BBNaija curtains episode on television.

Besides those personal experiences, the Nigerianised reality show is clearly ballooning by the year in contrast to its continental precursor, Big Brother Africa, which has been shelved by producer M-net since 2014 after nine seasons interspersed with a four-year break between the maiden edition in 2003 and the second season in 2007. For the continental show, the winning prize was raised to US$300,000 in 2012, where it held down until the programme was suspended in 2014. With BBNaija, however, other than the winner’s prize haul that grew to N60million in the latest season, from N45million a year earlier, 2019 auditions were held in eight locations across Nigeria – two more than the six centres used in 2018, and five more than the three centres used for the 2017 season.

While shelving Big Brother Africa after nine seasons in 2014, M-net said the show was under re-evaluation for strategic direction. That was the point at which BBNaija took centre stage. But unlike Big Brother Angola, which started off after that southern African country was displaced from the continental show by Rwanda in 2014 only to go comatose as it now appears, the Nigerian edition is bourgeoning.

‘We should interrogate what it is about (BBNaija) that so connects with the public, especially youths, to elicit the following we see’

Not that the Nigerian reality show has been without controversy. There have been fierce denunciations by moralists, who viewed the loose conduct of housemates during the show as exerting deeply corruptive influence on societal values. That is not mentioning culture minders, like the helmsman of National Council of Arts and Culture (NCAC) Otunba Segun Runsewe, who have strongly remonstrated at the denigration of our culture’s puritan elements by housemates’ activities on the show.

And there is yet no let up. Even on the heels of the latest season’s climax last week, a civil society group urged government to scrap BBNaija, arguing that the show has had no positive influence on youths and societal morality. The chair of Anambra State chapter of the Civil Liberties Organisation (CLO), Vincent Ezekwueme, added in a statement: “The show has painful, shameful, negative and devastating impact on our youths, culture and society. Wealth without wisdom is one of the worst blunders of the world.”

Besides the morality argument, other citizens had taken aim at the show on account of seeming value misplacement of the youth who constitute the bulk of its following. Late last July, the presidential candidate of Young Progressives Party (YPP) in the 2019 poll and former Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) Deputy Governor, Kingsley Moghalu, chided the tendency of youths to stay off voting in real elections while eagerly registering their preference on reality TV like BBNaija. “Our youth cheat themselves when they don’t vote, spend their time on the wrong things on social media, follow the glitterati (@BBNaijafan) instead of the literati (knowledge), and vote, not for ‘ought to win’ but ‘likely to win’ (bandwagon to nowhere, i.e. one chance!),” he wrote on Twitter, adding: “Total votes cast on Big Brother Nigeria 2018 = 170m. Total votes cast in general election 2019 = 27m. We need to get serious about rescuing our country from the doldrums, not just wishing away our reality in reality TV shows. We can view @BBNaija AND vote right in elections!”

Moghalu would be a quantum more distressed if he reckoned with the 2019 record of participation in BBNaija put at more than 250million votes. And there is every reason for anyone else to be troubled. Since the restoration of electoral democracy in 1999, this country recorded its lowest voter turnout – 34.75 percent – in the February 23^rd presidential election. According to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), the total number of accredited voters was 29,364,209, out of some 82.3million registered persons. And the commission’s disaggregation of the voter roll showed youths from 18 to 35 years constituting 51.11 percent of the voter population. Others were the middle-aged (36 to 50 years), 29.9percent, the elderly (51 to 70 years), 15.22 percent and the old (70+ years), 3.69 percent. You do not need a demographic breakdown of those who voted in the 2019 election to see that the largest voter constituency – the youth – was not mobilised for the poll. Yet they paid their way to avidly vote on BBNaija!

I share the view that there are enormous moral defects in the reality show warranting an overhaul of its content, if not the show altogether. But having said that, we should interrogate what it is about the show that so connects with the public, especially youths, to elicit the following we see. The following, to my mind, might be a symptom of a character defect in the society. Of course, a cerebral fiend of mine pointed out it could well be a sectional (i.e., southern Nigeria) trend that is not replicated all over the country. But that hardly explains the show’s staying power, including the corporate buy-in evidenced in its competing headline sponsorship – and that, in contrast to other shows (there are currently a teachers’ reality show and business reality show, among others on television) that exist only on the fringe of public consciousness.

The voter zeal in BBNaija should be another point of interest. It has been argued that the show’s voters were afforded some ease and risk-free environment for their participation, besides that they were sufficiently convinced their votes truly determine the fate of the housemates. The moral for our democracy would to be for the political class to work hard at making the electoral environment violence-free, and collaborate with the electoral umpire at ensuring that votes cast truly determine electoral outcomes. And INEC, for its part, could explore what is adaptable from the reality show’s voting system to enhance voter interest and confidence.