Edwin Usoboh The fifth season of the Big Brother Naija show kicked off on Sunday, July 19, 2020, and in keeping with tradition, the new season was aptly named after prevailing social circumstances – Big Brother Naija Lockdown. And since been stirring discussions as the battle for the N85 million grand prize heats up.
According to Keyhole, a digital media monitoring tool, Big Brother Naija related conversations reach an audience of 370 million online every day, and that in the last five days, over 760,000 users around the world have published content about the show on the internet. This is in addition to the 40 million TV audience watching from all over Africa.
Besides talking about their favourite housemate, social media users found a new conversation starter in the first few days of the show – the aesthetics of the house. Long time followers of the show commended the new look of the house, praising its ambience and attention to detail.
While the new look of the house was lauded, not many have stopped to think about how much would have been invested to achieve all that we see on our screens. However, sources close to the organisers of the show recently revealed that it cost about N2.5 billion to set up the BBNaija Lockdown house!
We learnt that the cost of the edifice was not unconnected to the newly introduced structures included for this year’s edition of the show.
The figure “includes construction costs of over N300 million, N2 billion spent on production equipment such as consoles, cameras, microphones, cables, lighting, audio, and so on. Hundreds of millions also went into the provision of utilities, information technology and safety systems, building modifications, COVID-19 adaptations to the house among others.”
Multichoice, organisers of the show, also “spent an additional N1 billion or more, on the actual production of the show, including the engagement of over 300 full-time employees and talent involved in the production of the show, in and outside the BBNaija house.”
Other structures include a personal suite comprising of a private bedroom, fitted bathroom, and a personal lounge/sitting area for head of house (HoH) and a salon for the housemates.
The development comes at about the same time when we also learnt that the show would boost the Nigerian economy by about N2 billion.
We learnt how Lai Mohammed, minister of information and culture, had asked the Nigerian Broadcasting Commission (NBC) to take the reality show off the air, citing fears of a possible spread of COVID-19 among housemates.
You can also take a look inside this year’s colourful BBNaija ‘Lockdown’ house.
