Mercy Johnson is launching a talk show. Or has launched a talk show. We’re still not sure but she made the announcement on her Instagram.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BMLRMrLjGFD/

We won’t talk about the title. “Mercy!!! Marriage, Cooking and Kids.” No. We won’t. We won’t talk about the exclamation marks either. No. All 3 of them. We won’t.

We’ll go straight into the show.

It took us a while but we finally made it through the first 2 “episodes”. We say that because we’re not quite sure what it is yet, but it most definitely isn’t a talk show. Perhaps “Mercy Johnson Okojie video biography part 1 and 2” as they are titled are meant more as a preamble. We hope they are, because we can’t imagine every episode of her talk show is going to be peppered with vanity shots of her house, cars, and reminders of the fact she’s married.

That last part is the most important. Seriously, she goes out of her way to flash her ring several times, mentions the fact that she’s “from Edo State by marriage” (is there even such a thing?) and the shot of her car license plate (it reads “Odi-Wife”). If there’s a particularly bright spot to all of this, we’ll have to say it’s a point somewhere just after the 3 minute mark in part 1, where, while talking about her past, she mentions failing her JAMB examinations.

Given how loath Nigerians (and, especially, our Nigerian stars) are to talk about the role of failure in their success, seeing the candor with which Mrs Okojie mentions this is encouraging.

But she doesn’t stop there. She also goes on to admit that she knows what it’s like to be poor, and how fear of going back to that place in life drives her everyday. We don’t know what format the show will take, but if she builds on this kind of honesty, maybe she’ll end up delivering something genuinely refreshing.

In any case, we are watching. We certainly hope it will be an improvement on Mona Lisa Chinda’s attempt.

Lord have mercy. (We just had to. Sorry)

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