Last week, the South African-owned DSTV cable satellite television brought to an end another season of its programme called Big Brother. This year’s edition involved more young African men and women, and larger prize money reward, and was therefore called Big Brother Amplified. The programme is very popular with middle class young people, and some adults with lots of idle time, television sets, power sources and money to subscribe, as well as questionable moral standards. The prize money for both male and female winners was huge with each of them taking home about 30 million naira. The two winners are also guaranteed a life of glitter in a media which operates by the values of an African middle class that emulates the Western world. The female winner was a Nigerian, voted by many Nigerians and other Africans. Another Nigerian had also won the contest a few years back.
The programme, BIG BROTHER brings together young African men and women into a household to indulge in immoral and anti-social acts that challenge the lowest standards of African morality. The programme is so offensive to mainstream moral standards that the sponsors themselves insist that subscribers have to specifically ask for it. Two years ago, the National Assembly rose up against the unrestricted access to the programme, and were only persuaded against banning it altogether in Nigeria by the impracticality of the decision, and the immense clout of DSTV and MTN in Nigerian business and political circles. The legislature succeeded in drawing attention to the noticeable moral perversion of the programme, and the impotence of the Nigerian middle class when it comes to protecting even the lowest levels of an African value system. The Nigerian market for DSTV and MTN is so huge, that it only made a concession that the programme will be available only to those who ask for it, after paying huge sums of money.
The BIG BROTHER Televisions concept, a British and European one, was centered around stripping contestants of all privacy, by televising even the most intimidate of their activities live, and encouraging them to excite viewers and win their votes so that they can move nearer to victory. Contestants are serially eliminated over a period spanning weeks, by fellow contestants called housemates, and by members of the public who vote using costly telecommunication channels. The contestants are carefully chosen to ensure a right combination of young men and women who will live together for about 3 months, and who have little qualms about nudity, drunkenness and disorder, taking bath in full view of millions of viewers, or engaging in activities of which by any standards of judgement win be condemned by a civilized society. Cameras follow them everywhere, and show their activities 24 hours a day, while they fight, play, connive against one another, put on deceitful faces, lie, cheat and cry, all to entertain the viewers.
When the BIG BROTHER programme first came to Africa, many Africans were horrified that it could be as successful as it turned out to be. It showed that Western media, particularly television, has indeed created a global culture, and the Africa middle class is quite vulnerable to it. Young men and women participating openly in activities which would normally be frowned at kept other young Africans glued to T.V sets. Subsequent editions became more daring, and resistance from conservative circles began to build, but had little impact.
The BIG BROTHER programme which has just been concluded was the biggest of them all. While it lasted, it took the attention of many of our young people away from the real world. It provided a diversion from the challenges and limitations of daily life, even among the fortunate middle class which can afford a television set and the high cost of subscribing to DSTV. But it also pushed the young people particularly further into a culture which will alienate them from their social context. It made billions for the producers of the television programme and mobile telephone companies and COCA COLA, as well as the participants and winners, but it has left Nigerians poorer. The programme is a monumental indictment of Africa parents and guardians who cannot even muster the strength to caution their young against the insidious corruption of programmes such as BIG BROTHER. When young people are televised to tens of millions of viewers engaging in social vices, and they get fame and wealth for it, they serve as role models for others. The winners who emerge from the BIG BROTHER House would have been stripped of all dignity and decency, yet they come out rich and famous. The programme adds nothing to our daily struggle to bring up a generation of Africans who should value and cherish personal decency, handwork and self-respect. It champions the lowest forms of personal and social conduct, and merely makes money for South African companies. It destroys the elements of our African identity, and destroys the boundaries between our cultural values and those of a western system which openly admits that it has lost the battle to preserve a civilized value system.
Those Nigerians who are celebrating the victory of Karen Igho who eventually emerged the winner are in the same pit as the young lady. The have been lured to play a game which panders to their lowest levels of humanity, so that foreigners can make money from our huge population and our propensity to swallow everything from the western world. The young lady should not be held up as heroin to other young Nigerians. She did nothing to earn the millions she was given in the end, other than participate in an activity which is of questionable value to her dignity as a Nigeria woman. She is no heroin
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