After much speculation, the third installment of Big Brother Nigeria kicked off with a largely disappointing opening show, but we’ll get to that in a bit.

For those not in know, the Big Brother reality tv franchise is one of the longest  and most enduring reality tv show formats in the world, which the idea franchised in every continent. Big Brother also has the singular honour of being the most successful reality television format in Africa, the first season in 2003 spawning a new kind of celebrity and the successive installments from 2007 to 2014 attracting young Africans from across the continent intent on winning the competition’s cash prize and garnering fans from across the continent. Big Brother has been the only franchise to consistently draw in millions of viewers across the continent, to drum the same level of enthusiasm for each new crop of hungry upstarts looking for their big break. The franchise also experimented with country based off shoots like Big Brother Mzansi (for South Africa), three consecutive seasons of Big Brother Angola and Mozambique targeted towards the continent’s Spanish speaking countries and Big Brother Nigeria, targeted towards the continent’s most popular country.

The very first Big Brother Nigeria installment was held in 2006, which is practically a whole different world from today considering how much the internet has changed how Nigerians interact with each other and the world at large. After the first season of Big Brother Africa, which had titillated the continent’s youth but infuriated its leaders, Endemol, the company responsible for bringing the franchise to Africa decided to zero in on their biggest market, Nigeria. They pooled a number of young Nigerians, relatively unknown and at the start of their careers, locked them up in a room for 90 days and let the social experiment begin. The O.G Big Brother Nigeria cast went on to prove themselves legendary. They were articulate, funny and whip smart.

Of the course of 90 days, well before the phenomenon of group watching via social media, Nigerians obsessed about the lives of the original Big Brother cast, drawing on personality traits, ethnicity and romantic affiliations to choose  favourite to support. There were surprise upsets and a winner who flew under the radar for the first few weeks before sprinting past season favourites like Ify Ejikeme and Ebuka Obi-Uchendu to win the prize money and bragging rights. But in all, that first season of Big Brother Nigeria was near perfect, and at least half of that season’s cast parlayed their short lived infamy into viable careers in entertainment. Kaltung started a label, Gideon Okeke and Maureen Osuji dated outside the house and went into acting, Ify Ejikeme got very popular on the television presenter circuit, hosting the Naija Lotto at some point and creating the slightly exoticized blueprint that the girls of the Spot and Moments With Mo would hone and perfect nearly a decade later.

While many people may disagree, it makes perfect sense that the team behind the Big Brother Africa franchise would choose 2017 to revisit their Nigerian experiment. 11 years had passed and the Big Brother Africa format has lost most of its appeal, thanks to the internet and its crowdsourcing capacities. The internet took away most of the neutrality of the competition, and Nigerians won the prize in 2009, 2010 and 2011, a triple feat when no other country has even managed two wins a row. Even when Nigerians didn’t win, our contestants were almost always in the final four, voted for and saved by rallying Nigerian fans even when we didn’t particular like the candidates representing us. Nigeria seemed to reach the peak of its influence in the global community in 2016 with several Nigerian creatives ‘crossing over’ in different fields and gaining mainstream, global success. Who wouldn’t want a piece of that pie?

In January 2017, at the heart of football season, DSTV announced the new season of Big Brother Nigeria. Ebuka Obi-Uchendu who unsurprisingly had the most enduring career of that first class, was brought in to host the new installment, using some of his pull to lure viewers. It was also a clear pivot from the hosting style of former Big Brother host IK Osakioduwa and an effort to ground the new show as homegrown rather than pan-African.  And of course the motley crew of contestants, each already a minor celebrity in their own right and actively pursuing careers in entertainment and entertainment adjacent fields. Tall Thin Tony set the ball rolling by stripping butt naked five days into the competition and by the first eviction, half of the house was already paired up and actively trying to copulate or at least go some of the way in that direction. It made for prime television and Nigerians sopped it all up. By the last round of evictions/nominations, Big Brother Nigeria tallied a record 26 million votes, two thirds of the numbers Big Brother Africa as a whole used to draw for its weekly eviction shows.

But the show also showed the more baser side of Nigerians. Tall Thin Tony actively pursued Bisola and led her to believe they were building a fairytale romance while he blatantly lied to her on cable television about his wife and three children back at home. Miyonse was branded as homosexual simply because he was light skinned and worked as a chef.  Female housemates like Gifty and TBoss routinely had to fight off the advances of fellow housemate Kemen, who was eventually evicted when he sexually assaulted TBoss. Debbie Rise also sexually assaulted House mate Bassey and was heavily criticized for it, though her eventual punishment was less stringent and spurred heavy debate about how gender influences the consequences for sexual assault. And Nigerians discussed every single gesture and nuance of the season’s forteen housemates, using them as a springboard for important conversations on consent, assault, sexuality and feminism.

The season’s three finalists seemed a perfect microcosm of Nigerian millennial sensibilities: we chose  the boy from the ‘street’ who seemed to have nothing going for him except the unwavering belief that he would blow, the incredibly talented unmarried babymama aggressively pursuing a redemption arc while upholding the systems that sought to punish for her own mistakes as a way to keep other women on the same level as her, and the arrogant mixed race, upper middle class socialite desperately clinging to her Nigerian identity because she didn’t cut it abroad. Eventually we choose the boy with the dream, because more than anything else, young Nigerians want desperately to ‘blow’.

With 26 million votes (each averaging about 100 naira), no one needed to tell Endemol to commission a sequel season of Big Brother. This time around they’re throwing conservatism out the window with 20 contestants, many of them mid level digital influencers in their own right. The opening ceremony featured Kiss Daniel performing Yeba, his heavily criticized single that had a line that promoted rape culture and consent, a conversation that seemed to dominate the season before; which is a pretty prescient omen as to how wild this season will be.

Let the games begin.

Editor