by Soma Oj.

So Efe gave a compelling final campaign speech in the Big Brother Naija house last night. All four finalists did and we can confidently say that Efe’s speech moved us the most – but that was only for about 2 minutes. Now we can explain that.

A dapper-looking Efe, in a navy blue suit and tie, let the other three housemates and eager Nigerians deep into the recesses of his mind as he tried to figure out who Efe is. “Who is Efe?” He asked before proceeding to answer wth an explanation of the boy that “grew up in Jos and is 24 years old and is a graduate of Economics”.

He then discarded that explanation in favour of an ad-campaign-script-worthy “Efe na the guy…” kind of story. Honestly, we were thinking: “Oh! If only Pepsi knew to wait for this before they put out that one that got them into trouble”.

[Catch up: This is the Kendall Jenner Pepsi Ad that rocked the internet]

He even got teary-eyed as he tried to make the point that can be summed up as #WeAreAllEfe – if you consider yourself someone who braved all the odds including selling tomatoes for your mum on the path to “making it”. In our opinion, that speech was as good as it gets especially in light of how much Nigerians love a good “I-made-it-regardless-of-how-hard-things-were-for-my-poor-family” kind of story.

It was as we started picturing the plot for this #WeAreAllEfe ad that we realised: “Snap! What if it’s all a lie?”

No for real, what if Efe’s grass to grace story is all a lie. What if the reason you are about to pick up that phone to help the next hardworking and down to earth guy win 25 million bucks is a hoax. What if he’s playing you?

Are we going to stage a protest? Heck no! We couldn’t even stage a protest when TuFace tried to get us to.

Are we going to boycott BBNaija the next time because of it? We doubt that. Maybe we’ll think to ourselves finally, how meaningless the show is and how we should never have spent all this time analysing what we thought was based on logistics when it really is not. But we definitely won’t boycott the next edition of the show. Tell yourself the truth c’mmon!

Okay, maybe we won’t “support” his career after the show. But you see, the problem with this is we are assuming that we are a people that have any history of having a long memory span and that we’ll remember anything about the guy after the show other than his “based on logistics” mantra.

The truth is, if Efe’s story turns out to be false, it won’t change anything because camps would have been divided anyways and we’d have still been #TeamEfe anyway. Or #TeamWhoeverElse.

Besides, he too can come out of the house and boldly say that everything he said and did in the house was all a strategy; that he overplayed game. And he’d even be more believable if he said his story was formulated based on research he conducted on how Nigerians relate with people who have had humble beginnings.