NOTHING apparently prepared the organisers of the Big Brother Naija (BBN) reality show for the unprecedented crowd that besieged the venue of the recent auditioning in Ikeja, Lagos State. Reports have it that blood flowed freely during the stampede on Aromire Street, off Adeniyi Jones Avenue, venue of the event. According to eyewitnesses, scores of participants suffered horrific injuries while struggling to gain access to the venue, with some ending up in hospital. As a matter of fact, many angry and excited youths engaged in fisticuffs as tension heightened on the queues. The accounts read like tales of woe written by cynics as they detailed the dashed hopes of would-be winners of the BBN’s N45 million ending up as victims of an event hurriedly put together by amateurs.
But the BBN has been around for quite a while and it is surprising that with the mammoth crowd of subscribers, the organisers could not muster the presence of mind to split them into batches even for the sake of their own convenience and comfort. As it turned out, the annual charade morphed into a tragic fiesta of some sort. To be sure, the BBN annual offering has the Nigerian audience in its vice grip. The attention is riveting and for the period that the show will be aired this year, it is a safe guess that it will dominate a major part of public discourse regardless of its inanities and humbug.
It would have been an exciting pastime elsewhere if it had not been a distraction, especially in a poor country with massive shortage of infrastructure and opportunities. For the youths who are its main target, it has been difficult fathoming the edifying values that the show has successfully added to their collective essence aside from the yearly scandalous, lewd prurience. Its dragnet for the youths cannot be discountenanced.
It is easy to see that the BBN show has exposed the emptiness in the lives of the country’s youths. They have become so desperate in searching for meaning and fulfilment in their lives, a quest that has been serially denied. This is arguably a tragic development for a society that claims to have plans for its youth population. It is like handing the essence of these vulnerable youths to the whims and caprices of an award-giving but patently mischievous organisation that has been given the chance to prey on their desires.
In a more purposeful and inventive environment, it is possible to drive many positive and laudable programmes on platforms similar to the BBN. Such platforms could be the avenue needed to propagate the desirable societal values of hard work, patience, patriotism, creativity and leadership qualities that have been depleted by unemployment, poverty and corruption. Sadly, that initiative has been sacrificed and given to the banal spectre of commercialisation. What is more, the fact that the winners of the BBN are honoured by the society through offers like record deals and opportunities in the media and government circles fuels the desperation with which the country’s youths approach the show.
There are certainly voids in people’s lives and they seek validation and fulfilment continuously and desperately. They desire to make some meaning out of the otherwise empty and dreary lives foisted upon them by a successive run of leaderships bereft of imagination and focus. Without better, more sublime and fulfilling options, the youths resort to banal and destructive offers by profane platforms to relieve the intense passions within. The time has therefore come to decisively address the problem of poverty and crashing societal values. The auguries are portentous.
and then