We might say that Big Brother Naija is a distraction. We can suggest that there are more serious things to turn our attention to. But, this author argues, we cannot deny the impact the reality TV show has had and continues to have on socio-political discourse in Nigeria.
My friends and I spent many afternoons in the first few months of 2017 luxuriating in the cascading shade of the trees that lined the senior staff quarters of the University of Nigeria Nsukka. We would come together, phones-in-hand, under the excuse of ‘gathering materials for our final year project’. What we really did was scroll through Facebook and harass strangers that brought any Big Brother Naija or ‘BBN’ gist to our timelines. One person would spot a post related to BBN and tag the rest of us in the comment section, where we would begin our inquisition.
Our belief was simple: we were the serious people who saw how much of a distraction BBN was. We believed that people who watched BBN were part of the problem with Nigeria. We would list a litany of social issues that Big Brother subscribers should be addressing instead of wasting their time on ‘such low entertainment’. When we finished dragging them, we would return to our hostels with the movies we had downloaded. We neither discussed these national problems among ourselves nor did we seek out the kind of socio-politically conscious TV shows that might have backed our sanctimony. Instead, we returned to our dubbed versions of How To Get Away With Murder and La La Land.
Big Brother first aired in the Netherlands in 1999...
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