Sunny Dada is a Journalist and Activist. Dada took to his Facebook Wall on Sunday 22nd September, 2019 to express is view on the Big Br...
Sunny Dada is a Journalist and Activist. Dada took to his Facebook Wall on Sunday 22nd September, 2019 to express is view on the Big Brother Naija (BBN) Show.
These were is comments:
"I have been asked many times to give opinion on the Big Brother Naija (BBN) Show; those who follow my briefs have also accused me of running away from the associated controversies".
![]() |
Sunny Dada |
"The winner of the show will walk away with N60M; that's more than the retirement benefit of a level 14 Director who put in 30yrs of service into the Nigerian Civil Service. Besides the prize money, housemates can win potential millions in activities and stuffs. This price money is generated from votes by viewers who are mostly young people. The 2018 edition raked in a total of 170M votes and the votes were paid for by those who voted. The just concluded presidential election, did not record up to 40M votes, 90% of the state governors elected, did not also enjoy up to 1M votes even though all that was required to vote was just a PVC. This indicates that the programme is more popular amongst our youths than both Buhari and Atiku, including our state governors put together".
"A lot of youths did not participate in the last electoral process even though youths recorded the highest PVC collection rate. This was notwithstanding the signing into law the 'Not too young to run' bill. The few youths who managed to emerge as party flag bearers did not do well as a result of the lack of support from their counterparts".
"The election showed that youths are simply not interested in who governs them yet they complain the most on the Social Media about the type of leadership they eventually get".
"According to the host of the BBN show, 30M votes out of the 170M votes, were recorded in the concluding weeks of the show. Each vote costs N30 per SMS. 30X170M gives you an approximate of N5.1billion. This amount is bigger than the Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) of Zamfara State for five months. The question is: are the viewers ripped off? NO! The difference is creativity on the part of the organizers and crass gullibility on the part of the viewers who do the voting. Interestingly most of the young people who contribute this money belong to the lower rung of the poverty index. But how does the government benefit from this money?"
"In financial terms, government generally benefits through the National Broadcasting Commission (NBC) from renewal of licenses. But we can hardly measure if license fees are comensurate with billions made from the programme. Although it can still be argued that government makes money from taxes from the owners of the programme. The subscription rate for DSTV/GOTV also increased astronomically within this period; many Nigerian dealers made brisk money from the sale of decoders and expanded their businesses. Apart from the fact that this helps the government in terms of creating scarce employment opportunities, it also boosted commercial advertising. This means more money for government through the Advertising Practitioners Council of Nigeria (APCON).
There are however serious worries. If you do a Google search on the most topical issue among young people in Nigeria, it will reveal that primordial things like BBNaija, occupies the ladder as the most topical, not even the traditional English Premier League (EPL)".
"This portends a serious problem for my generation. It means that I have a generation that is less interested in serious issues that shapes their lives. This is also an irony when compared to the major preoccupation of an average China youth who believes that he's in a technology and economic race with his counterparts in the United States and Europe".
"This can also explain why Tacha was only able to define 'characteristics' as "Tacha, Tacha; Tacha." Until I saw pictures and video clips of the road show for Tacha by her supporters, I didn't believe that our gullibility for entertainment that brings nothing to the table in terms of human development, has become incurably shameful".
COMMENTS