70%: The Stand That Changed Everything
On Big Brother Naija 2006, Agency, and Learning the Worth of What You Already Are
The email arrived and fifty plus people celebrated.
Sony BMG had agreed to license their catalogue – something in the region of three million songs – and the production crew for the first Big Brother Naija responded the way you would expect fifty people to respond when a problem had just been solved. Wonderful. Amazing. Great news. I saw the thread and I understood the feeling. But I replied with something different. I said that while this was good news, we intended to play 70% Nigerian music.
The immediate retort was something to the effect of: as long as it was world class.
I think I got upset. I said that I believed I knew what world class sounds and looks like.
That exchange – that single email thread in a house full of cables and cameras and a continent waiting to watch – is what this story is really about. Not just Big Brother Naija. Not just the music. It is about the moment you decide, in a room where the default is someone else’s standard, that you already have what you need. It is about agency. It is about understanding the value of what we bring to the table, valuing it and unlocking it, I knew that given the platform we would make history.
Thank God we were right. Sorry, Marie dear it was never personal ❤️ and thanks for all your guidance.
— ◆ —
The Education of an Instinct
By the time Big Brother Naija aired in March 2006, I had been doing it for years without knowing that was what I was doing.
It began in 1999. Storm had optioned to deliver The World Cup Village for the entire month of FIFA U20 World Cup Nigeria ’99. With Kojo Annan and Laolu Saraki, we were representing ISL Sports, the largest sports agency that worked with global federations and ran all sponsor rights for FIFA, UEFA, CAF and more. Storm ran the first major concerts ever held at the Polo Club thanks to the support of their President, Dolapo Akerele. I’m sure he never thought he would see his name in my article but his assent for those concerts with Daddy Showkey, Lagbaja, Femi Kuti, and Blaccky later led to Star Mega Jam holding at the same venue from 2001 with Usher and R Kelly and Arise music festival all using that venue. The late Abba Kyari who was MD at United Bank for Africa was very gracious, and he made sure they came in as our key sponsor. This was facilitated by Meroe Bashir and Supo. We made history quietly, the way history is usually made—by people who are too busy working to know they are making it.
In 2005, I formalised a partnership with Remi Ogunpitan, who had provided TV production support to me at the first world cup village and was the first person to show me you could really focus on TV production and the brands world and make money and so we incorporated Storm Vision. We conceived a series called The Players—focused on the young turks driving Nigeria forward. The first two subjects were Wale Tinubu and Emeka Chikelu for our pilot series and we had an industry screening at Terra Kulture with M-Net and major sponsors. We didn’t find any takers at the show but the brand manager for Amstel Malta, Ms Eyitemi Taire, was in the room, and she asked if we could create something for Nollywood. My sister Uju—one of the two most intelligent people I know, the other being Nkiru also my sister—is something of a genius storyteller. In no time she had created Amstel Malta Box Office. That was the first reality show built around Nollywood, and today I look back and see Moses Praiz of SuperSport on that show, and when I trace his career, I think: that alone was worth making it.
The lesson I was learning, season by season, was simple: Nigerian content had an audience that was waiting. Not an audience to be persuaded or educated or slowly brought along. An audience that was already there, already hungry, already ready to see itself on screen. By the time Big Brother came along, I was not guessing about any of this. I knew.
Wiring the House
Remi was making Doctor’s Quarters for M-Net in 2005, and we learned they wanted to bring Big Brother to Nigeria. I went to South Africa and met Harrie Linders, the MD of Endemol South Africa, who were the dominant TV format company on the continent—providing major content to SABC, M-Net, ETV. We struck a partnership and incorporated Endemol Nigeria, and together we convinced M-Net we could deliver the show.
We began pre-production in late 2005. The show went live in March 2006 – delayed for the African Nations Cup to finish – after we had wired the house with kilometres of cable and thirty-seven cameras and built the stage for the eviction show. The key team in Nigeria included Marie Rosholt as co-executive producer from Endemol, Erikka Klopper leading production, and Nkiru Asika and Ope Odugbemi alongside them. The show was hosted by Olisa Adibua and Michelle Dede – two of the sharpest presenters Nigeria had – and styled by Omoyemi Akerele and Bola Balogun, who dressed both hosts with a precision and Nigerian sensibility that was entirely intentional. Fashion, like the music and the fabrics in the house, was never an afterthought. It was part of the argument.
The interior of the house itself was a declaration made before a single housemate had spoken a word. We used Nigerian fabrics throughout—as throw pillows, platters, dining tables, furniture, window blinds. The house was distinctly and unapologetically Nigerian. It was featured in South African interior and real estate magazines. International visitors noticed and remarked on it. That mattered to me deeply, not because we were trying to prove equivalence with anyone else’s aesthetic, but because we were storifying our identity. We were saying to the continent and to our own people: this is a visual language, a living cosmology, and it belongs in the modern world not as a curiosity but as a full and necessary presence.
And then there was the music.
From roughly 1996, Channel O had been the only African music television station broadcasting to the entire continent. MTV Base had not yet launched in Africa until 2004. If you wanted your music seen from Lagos to Lusaka to Nairobi to Johannesburg, Channel O was the only door that existed. Elajoe was the person inside the Big Brother house running that legendary playlist—curating the Friday night house party, embedding Nigerian sound into the rhythm of daily life in the house. He was as much a part of the show as any housemate, and he deserves his name on this record.
The Storm Was Brewing
It is important to understand that Big Brother Naija did not arrive in a vacuum. It was the epicentre of a storm that had been building for months—a storm we were deliberately cooking, track by track, deal by deal, event by event, while the show itself became the moment everything crystallised.
In December 2005, we launched Jazzman Olofin’s album at 1145 with Soundcity—their first-ever album release party. In February 2006, Dare’s “Escalade” video hit MTV and Channel O, announcing him to the continent after his stint on 2005’s Project Fame that was held in South Africa. Big Brother Naija went live in March and ran through June—ninety-one days that changed the conversation permanently. In April, we did the first full red-carpet launch for a Nigerian artist at Eko Hotel for Dare’s debut album—over 1,500 guests, a full concert, 35 TV stations, and the longest red-carpet Lagos had ever seen. In June, Ikechukwu’s debut album “Son of the Soil” had its release party. Then in August Storm shut down the Notting Hill Carnival—Don Jazzy, D’banj, Ikechukwu, Naeto C, Jazzman Olofin, eLDee and DJ Tee, who shot two videos for Jazzman during the trip, as well as DJ Kofi, who made the Storm Report mixtape, still extraordinary listening today. The entire carnival felt the impact at the Nigeria corner that year, where we partnered with Obalende Suya to deliver the artistes and DJs.
In November 2006 came the Channel O Awards in Johannesburg—and what happened that night was a direct consequence of everything we had built through the year, with Big Brother Naija as the epicentre. We had gone from one Nigerian nominee out of nineteen categories just two years earlier to sweeping the awards, winning something in the region of sixteen out of nineteen categories. I remember the feeling in the room. It was not just celebration. It was realisation. We looked at each other and understood: we have something here. Not a moment. Something that had shifted the ground underneath the entire continental music industry and was not going back. That Channel O sweep set off the Afrobeats run that we are still riding today.
All of this was powered by relationships built with strategic intent. We had done deals to ensure that Channel O flew all African award nominees plus their managers to Johannesburg for the ceremony. And we brought Nigerian music media with us: Ayo Animasaun and Sesan Adeniji from Bubbles Magazine were in that room. We were not just making music and hoping people would notice. We were building the infrastructure of visibility, deliberately and systematically, and making sure the people who needed to witness it were present when it happened.
The Channel O relationship did not end with the show. I kept building it. The trust that had been established through Big Brother Naija and everything around it created the foundation for what came next. Eventually that persistent, strategic building produced 100% Naija—the first Nigerian travelogue series, with a local music host in each city, running for three full seasons, showing the continent a Nigeria beyond Lagos. It was a format I developed for Channel O because I understood the platform, understood what it needed, and had earned the relationship that made it possible. That is how these things work when you are serious about them. You do not stop at the first win. You keep building until something new becomes possible.
The Stand
When I replied to that email, I was not being difficult. I was being real. The major global labels left Nigeria in 1993. They left. And we built anyway. The indigenisation of media since 1992, and the advent of Raypower and Kennis Music, had already shown exactly what Nigerian music was capable of in their absence. But NTA, the national broadcaster, was off the pace, and the infrastructure that should have been amplifying Nigerian creativity was pointed in the wrong direction. The default, in almost every room I entered during that period, was that Nigerian content needed to be supplemented, validated, upgraded.
I disagreed. And Big Brother Naija was the platform on which that became our opportunity to tell a different story and celebrate Nigerians and their energy.
We introduced live music performances for the very first time on eviction nights, something that has continued ever since. We created the Channel O eviction parties at the now-defunct Vault Nightclub opposite Mega Plaza in Victoria Island, specifically to celebrate the departing housemates and gave over 120 artists a live stage and continental reach and profiling. I was laser-focused on the Friday night house party—music and atmosphere that felt like Nigeria, not a reasonable approximation of somewhere else for that one must thank Elajoe for managing the playlist “Imagine That” by Styl-Plus became a massive record during the show because we played it constantly. We had booked Styl-Plus to open the show, but they told us they had separated—just when the entire continent was looking for them. So, we pivoted and had D’banj and Don Jazzy perform at the opening with the Mo’Hits crew to our weekly African audience of over 60 million.
Through the run of the show, we had placed over 120 Nigerian artists onto Channel O via the eviction parties that were live provenance bases with 8 out of 9 artists performing every eviction night, and got their videos playlisted. Here is the thing that still trips me: once we had put an artist’s video on Channel O, they would record it off the screen and take it to their local NTA station and literally shame the broadcasters into playing it. Nigerian television was being dragged forward by Nigerian artists holding up a mirror. Another major ally was DJ Waxxy – our Nigerian brother and ally, with his own show on Channel O – who would break new sounds and artists from here almost every week. Another major breakout star from the show unknown to most was Uche Eze who sent me an email when we were in pre-production asking for media accreditation for her blog which was called Bella Naija online, I didn’t know her and she was in university in America but there was something about that email that made me respond and later introduce her to Sandy Singh, head of communications at Mnet South Africa, who then brought her into the Mnet family. She is now an institution and will also celebrate the 20th anniversary of Bella Naija. I am so proud of her but beyond the fact we let her people work on the show I’m not sure I met her until a few years later. I don’t need to know you to assist; as long as you have real talent, I will collaborate.
I want to be clear about something. We never charged any of those artists. Not one. The same was true with P-Square, D’banj and 2face—all of whom I made sure were in heavy rotation on MTV Base. My agenda was always a Nigerian agenda. I did not build those relationships for Storm. I built them for all the artists, we were standing in the gap, and the gap was the space between what we thought Nigerian music was already capable of and what the global and continental industry was willing to acknowledge.
What we did in 2006 we continued for at least another two years, with Martin Mabutho, Tola Odunsi and I acting as human couriers, physically carrying videos to Johannesburg. That is what it looked like in practice—three people on flights with hard drives, doing the work that infrastructure had not yet arrived to do.
Building the Machine
What people saw on screen was a show. What was happening behind it was a full commercial and creative ecosystem being built in real time, with no template to follow, because no one in Nigeria had done this before at this scale.
Tola Odunsi was a key part of this. He led our commercial operation—the product placement, some of the hotel and accommodation deals, the brand partnerships woven into the fabric of the production. And crucially, Tola already had a working relationship with Gideon Khobane at M-Net through club activations they had been running before the show existed. That pre-existing trust meant our commercial conversations moved faster and deeper than they otherwise would have. We were not strangers asking for favours. We were partners who had already built something together and were now building something bigger.
On the continental expansion side, the key figure was Yolisa Phale at Channel O. She opened the door to Nigerian content and welcomed everything we brought with both intelligence and generosity. We understood what that access represented and we used it with full strategic intent.
Then there was the talent. When the housemates came out of that house, there were no artist managers ready to receive them. The infrastructure simply did not exist. So, we held them. We looked after them, helped shape the early relationships between the housemates as emerging personalities and the brands that were beginning to see their value – as influencers – before that word even existed in the Nigerian context. We watched those relationships grow and we understood what they meant: that the show had created a new category of Nigerian public figure, and that category needed tending.
Every day of that production we were innovating. Every week something new was being solved, created, negotiated, built. The show was the visible part. The machine underneath it – the commercial deals, the talent relationships, the continental distribution partnerships, the media presence we were carefully constructing – was what made the show’s impact extend far beyond the ninety-one days it was on air. Big Brother Naija became the epicentre that moved the needle on the wide acceptance of Nigerian music and energy in a way that nobody had ever seen before. And it did not happen by accident.
The People in the Room
Big Brother Naija gave Nigeria so many standout moments. We brought into that house some of the most extraordinary Nigerians—from Jay-Jay Okocha to Lagbaja, from Cobhams Asuquo, the genius blind musician and producer, to Frank Nweke Jnr, the then-Information Minister, who walked into my office and essentially invited himself onto the show. Once I had made it clear he could do nothing political inside the house, he said he simply wanted to enter on Africa Day and give the housemates a pep talk. In that address he spoke about Nigeria’s role as South Africa’s most committed anti-apartheid ally—a reminder, broadcast across the continent, of what Nigeria had historically stood for. That was the first time I met him. The “I Am a Nigerian” poem, written by Nkiru Asika in 2005, had already become something he carried everywhere—a national declaration he read at every event he attended as Minister, its words made more resonant each time by the audience he stood before.
I will never forget Shina Peters in his all-black leather shutting down the house. And then the late, great Onyeka Onwenu doing the same. Every week we had to explain to our international crew who these people were and assure them they would kill it. They always did. Because what they carried was not just talent—it was the full weight of a culture that had been expressing itself with sophistication and depth for centuries. You cannot fake that. The continent felt it instantly.
One night the late Osaze Osifo – founding director at Econet and who was running a private equity company – came to one of our Channel O eviction parties at Vault. He took me aside and said: “Obi, this is real—we have a USP, something vital that everyone wants”. Then he told me he would raise money for Storm and valued us at USD 50 million. That was 2006. Sadly, we could not take advantage of that moment. But he was correct. We did have something vital. We had built it, piece by piece, in a period when most people were still waiting for someone else to build it first. Rest in peace, Osaze. I wish you were still here to see how far the next generation are taking it.
Some of the people who were part of that season are no longer here. Martin Mabutho. Osaze Osifo. Onyeka Onwenu. I carry them. And I carry what they witnessed and bless them for all they did and meant to everyone.
But none of it – not the music, not the guests, not the commercial architecture we built around the show – would have meant anything without the fourteen people who walked into that house and gave Africa a window into who we are. They were the show. Without them there is no story to tell.
The original twelve were Frank Konwea, Ifeoma “Ify” Ejikeme, Chukwuebuka “Ebuka” Obi-Uchendu, Chinedu Amah, Francisca Owumi, Gideon Okeke, Helen Eremiokhale, Ichemeta Ochoga, Joan Agabi, Joseph Ada, Maureen Osuji, and Adeyinka “Yinka” Oremosu. Joining them on Day 23 as wildcard entries were Katung Aduwak and Sandra “Sandy” Osigbovo.
We have lost two of that family. Joseph Ada and Francisca Owumi are gone. May their memories remain a blessing to everyone who loved them and everyone who watched them light up that screen.
The others have each carried the moment forward in their own way. Ebuka Obi-Uchendu has become one of the most recognisable faces on the continent—MC, host, compere, and the present face of Big Brother Naija itself, completing a full circle that no scriptwriter could have planned. Katung Aduwak, who came in as a wildcard and left as champion, went on to a successful career in television and media. Gideon Okeke became a multi-talented actor and performing artist—I last saw him performing as Fela in Bolanle Austen-Peters’ Kalakuta Queens at the reopening of the National Theatre, commanding the stage exactly as you would expect. And the rest of that group – Frank, Ify, Chinedu, Helen, Ichemeta, Joan, Maureen, Yinka, Sandy – each took something from that house and built with it in their own way.
I am proud of all of them. Because without them there would be no show, no story. And in their stories – in what each of them became – you can see the reflection of exactly what we hoped would happen when we put fourteen young Nigerians in a house and let the continent watch.
And it was not only the housemates. Look at the stylists. Omoyemi Akerele and Bola Balogun dressed Michelle for every eviction night while fashion pioneer Dakova took care of Olisa’s clothes bringing the same deliberate Nigerian sensibility to fashion that we were bringing to the music and the interior of the house. Today, Omoyemi has built Lagos Fashion Week into the most powerful fashion platform in West Africa, carrying Nigerian designers to global retail and international audiences. That trajectory did not begin after Big Brother Naija. It was already in motion in the person who stood behind the camera making sure our hosts looked like exactly who they were. The show was a greenhouse. And everything that was planted in it grew.
All of this would have been impossible without a strong production team led on the storm side by Remi Ogunpitan, Nkiru Asika, Ope Odugbemi and I. On the Endemol and Mnet side, it was led by Marie Rosholt and Erika Klopper, and we had sixteen South African heads of department who trained so many of that crew that have gone on to produce most of the major reality shows on Nigerian TV over the last 20 years. Today, the production crew for Big Brother is all Nigerian as the talent has been developed locally.
What It Proved
Big Brother Naija 2006 was the show that platformed Nigerian music and Afrobeats and our culture across Africa and made it accessible—not just to African audiences but to a continent that now had a frame of reference, a shared experience around which to organise that feeling. The only things audiences had really seen before were the Nollywood movies—a brilliant but partial window into Nigerian personality. Big Brother Naija was twenty-four hours a day, driven by SMS engagement before social media, and the numbers were extraordinary. The continent was fully engaged. Nigerians were magnetic. Not as a surprise to me but certainly to many, not only were we magnetic but Africa fell in love with our energy and personality or swag.
None of this would have been possible without the executives at M-Net and Channel O who believed in what we were building—Joe Hundah, Gideon Khobane, Sandy Singh, Yolisa Phale, Martin Mabutho, and Don Etim. Between 2006 and 2008, that partnership was the engine. We brought the content and the conviction; they provided the reach. Without that collaboration we could not have exported the culture at the scale we achieved, and I want that on the record.
I often think about what that season gave to a generation of young Nigerians. It gave them something that cannot be manufactured or imported: the full realisation that it is enough to be who you are. That you do not need to change to suit anyone. That you do not need to mimic anything or anyone. That Nigerian identity – our stories, our sounds, our fabrics, our faces, our humour, our grief, our cosmology – are not a regional footnote to world culture. It is an ancient and necessary part of it. The world is not complete without our stories. And when we tell them fully, in our own voice and on our own terms, the world responds—because people everywhere recognise truth, and they have been waiting for this truth for a long time.
When you watch Shina Peters in all-black leather command a room full of cameras and a continent watching, something shifts. Something settles. Not because he has proven himself against someone else’s standard. But because he is fully, completely, magnificently himself—and the world can see it. That is what we were building. That is what fourteen housemates, a legendary playlist, Nigerian fabrics on every surface, and a 70% music policy added up to. Not a statement of competition. An act of restoration. A storification of who we are, offered to a world that needed it—and knew it the moment it arrived.
As I like to say: Entertainment, Music and Movies are known as Show Business. Back in 2006 we were still validating the Show. Today we are at a different stage—trying to unlock the Business side, to create the sovereign domestic ecosystem that Osaze saw the outline of nearly twenty years ago and that we must all build to make everything we do sustainable.
It builds on a foundation that was laid in those four months, in a house dressed in Nigerian fabric, with a soundtrack that was 70% ours, styled by Nigerians who knew exactly what they were doing, hosted by Nigerians who carried the culture with full confidence, and watched by a continent that truly saw us for the first time at that scale. The fundamental truth is we used Big Brother Naija to platform Nigerian energy, swag, and most importantly the music, to Africa and the world and we learned that they loved everything we were bringing to the table. The thing is I felt that we had to bring as much talent out as possible and flood the continent with our energy and music and then we would be unstoppable and that is exactly what happened. This would have been impossible without the active partnership and support of the Mnet team, who leveraged all their platforms and delivered billboards across the continent. This came before Africa Magic arrived, but Big Brother Naija was certainly a huge bet on Nigeria and I am so proud that it was me and my team that got to deliver Nigeria to the world. That show gave us the confidence and energy and enabled all the young artists to find self-belief and as our sounds evolved to become Afrobeats, we learned that being Nigerian was the key, not mimicking others. Immediately our talents understood this one thing and began to transmit and embrace it, we began to grow and the music took with it the fashion, the energy and the dance, as well as the swag that everyone talks about today. In that moment, that generation of Nigerians learned something critical—that being authentic and Nigerian was a winning combination.
They were enough. We were enough. We always were.
Obi Asika
Obi Asika was Executive Producer and spokesman for Big Brother Naija 2006.
NB: If I forgot anyone’s role in this show please forgive me, I’m not as young as I once was and it’s actually been 20 years.
Postscript:
As one looks back and reminisces on those days, a key moment from the show was Frank Nweke Jnr telling the housemates, and by extension the continent, of the enormous sacrifices and lengths Nigeria went to fight the apartheid regime globally, at the UN, the frontline states and with citizens’ tax contributions and government policy nationalizing British Petroleum for selling Nigerian oil to apartheid South Africa. I don’t believe any nation did more than Nigeria. Even at the end, it was Emeka Anyaoku who was Secretary General of The Commonwealth that formed The Eminent Persons Group cochaired by President Obasanjo that negotiated the release of Mandela. We played a long and honourable role in South Africa’s liberation, and it reminds me of the power of storytelling. I wonder if we would not have the troubles we see today, if we had told these stories, through song, dance, and film and TV series, and explained why Nigeria was the leader of the antiapartheid movement for 30 years. This generation of Africans need to know that there was a “Big Brother Nigeria” long before the TV show, who for decades sent technical aid to several African nations, intervened for many to attain independence and provided manpower and funds. Like all good big brothers, Nigeria did not ask for anything in return or the repayment of loans but was simply focused on the emancipation of the entire Continent. This is a story that must still be told, because even though I am Executive Producer of the first Big Bother Naija 2006, I am also old enough to know the true history.
…Asika, a music and creative industry expert, is the Director General at the National Council for Arts and Culture
