The curtains fell on season nine of Big Brother Africa last Sunday with Tanzanian Idris winning it all.
Not the most explosive season we shall talk about, but more as one that reinforced the fact that it is a show where good morals and behaviour are considered boring and “unentertaining”. For the first weeks Africa seemed determined to change the perception that bad boys/girls win the continental reality show, but five weeks into the game and it was the same old, same old.
Idris could easily be the record-holder of the guy to kiss the most girls in Big Brother’s house, at one point openly playing two of them. And Africa was impressed enough to vote for him overwhelmingly.
It was almost a case of déjà vu, reminding us of season two winner, Tanzanian Richard, who entered the house as a newlywed, but by week two was in a hot sexual relationship with Angolan, Tatiana, and a day to the grand finale almost had a threesome that sucked in good girl gone bad, Ofunneka from Nigeria. Well, the following day Richard was crowned the winner.
This time round, it was 21-year-old Idris against the arrogant loudmouth, but still good boy, Tayo from Nigeria. Throughout the season, it was clear the final would be between Tayo and Zambian Macky2, who had quite cantankerous and noisy followers on social media.
As the game wound up, however, the witty Idris became a real contender, especially when he started “entertaining” Africa with his bed-hopping antics that ultimately saw our own Ellah lose favour with countries such as Rwanda.
Being the only East African out of the eight finalists (five were from southern Africa, two from west Africa) played in his favour, as Uganda, Rwanda, Kenya and Tanzania handed him the equivalent of Shs 780m.
“We gave East Africa a chance to have a single housemate and that was stupid; they outplayed us. Rwanda played Nigeria by not voting for Ellah,” tweeted a Nigerian fan.
Tayo, who looked confident of winning on Sunday was the shock-runner-up. He had already started crying with excitement before the announcement was made, and earlier on, he had called Idris just a “small kid”, so he did not see the loss coming.
And Africans are not kind people. They have been taunting Nigeria on social media for losing both Big Brother’s $300,000 and qualification to Afcon 2015. The other finalists were JJ and Butterphly (Zimbabwe), Macky2 (Zambia), M’am Bea (Ghana), Sipe (Malawi) and Nhlanhla (South Africa).
The show was opened by the evicted housemates in the order they left; some like Mira, Esther, Resa, Laveda and Sabina had surely been forgotten. They rapped and sang about their moments in the house.
During her last week in the house, it was clear Idris had chosen Ellah over the Tswana Goitse. After her eviction, he did shed some crocodile tears and even went on to deliver a love letter for her. However, after his win, if the pictures from the event are anything to go by, he had chosen Goitse!
Talking to The Observer by phone, Idris refuted Africa’s view of him as a ladies man.
“I wouldn’t have made it this far if that was true,” he said.
He said Ellah almost slapped him when they first met after his win, but insisted there’s no bad blood between them. In fact Idris plans to visit Uganda in January. At the moment he has not made up his mind on what to do with his good fortune, but he plans to use his fame and money to give back to Africa, especially the youth.
