How KellyRae’s strategy with wife earned him BBNaija win

After ten weeks of intense drama, strategies, and games, Kingsley ‘Kellyrae’ Sule has won the ninth season of Big Brother Naija.

He beat Wanni Danbaki, who came close second with a 3.47 per cent vote difference, and Onyeka emerged as the second runner-up at the BBNaija season 9 finale on Sunday,

The professional singer from Delta State won N100 million prizes, including N60 million cash and a brand-new SUV.

He won the season after amassing 35.95 per cent of the total votes. His strategic approach earned him this win. In a season where housemates arrived in pairs, Kellyrae selected his newlywed wife, Kassia, as his duo partner.

This marked the first time we saw a married couple as contestants on the show. Although we had seen a married individual, Mike Edwards, come close to claiming the crown, this is the first time a married contestant has taken the ultimate prize.

Married barely seven months before the show started, many Nigerians soon projected that their stay in the BBNaija house would ruin what many termed a marriage in its early stages, even though the couple had been together for eleven years.

If you had run a poll at the show’s start to predict how far the Doubleday duo would go this season, most people would have bet that the duo, due to their marital status, would have been one of the first duos to be evicted.

In a matter of weeks, a status that usually compromises contestants’ chances on the show served as their selling point, as Kellyrae and Kassia’s strategy to hide their marriage in the house led to one of the biggest plot twists this season.

Worthwhile gamble

In a move devised by the couple, they hid that they were married from the housemates, bonding with other housemates without necessarily clinging onto each other to stop them from making connections, whether with women or men.

Before his eviction, Toby Forge, an ex-housemate, even professed love to Kassia, who amusedly entertained his advances but set boundaries. Although housemates suspected their involvement, there was nothing to prove their suspicions, and the duo made sure of it.

When BBNaija host Ebuka Obi-Uchendu prompted Kellyrae to reveal why he and his wife decided to hide their marital status, he mentioned that he wanted everyone to be free with them and not target them because they were a couple.

From the first live to the last eviction show, Kassia and Kellyrae never saw the bottom of the voting polls as a duo. Even when the game changed to a race for individuals, they were equally supported by their fanbase until the penultimate episode, when the Doubleday management chose not to campaign for Kassia so votes would not be shared in the finals. Kellyrae could secure the win for the couple. In a matter of weeks, their sacrifice has paid off.

From lovey-dovey moments that had both the viewers and suspecting housemates falling in love with them as individuals and as a couple to their fights, individual skills, overall interaction, and free-spiritedness, all these elements secured them a place in the hearts of many.

However, unlike previous seasons where the winner was clear, this season was the hardest to predict, and the voting polls show reasons why.

Regardless, on Sunday, Kellyrae was crowned winner and, in weeks, joined the BBNaija Winners’ Hall of Fame.