#BBNaija2018: My Father Didn’t Know When I Quit Bank Job For The Show – Tobi Bakre

Big Brother Naija Double Wahala  second runner-up, Tobi Bakre  said his father was not aware of his decision to dump his banking career for the show.
He was one of the most interesting housemates and in a recent interview he shares some of his experiences on the show.
When asked about what prompted his decision to be a part of Big Brother Naija Double Wahala show, he said;
”For me, I have always watched the Big Brother reality television show while growing up and it had always been somewhere I had dreamt to be. I had always seen myself as an interesting personality but I always felt that you needed to have the right connection or know people before you could get into the Big Brother house but this time around, it was an open audition.
You did not even need to buy a form. All you needed to do was to get to the venue of the audition with your Nigerian passport. I got to the venue of the audition late on a Saturday and it rained on that day, so I had to return. The next day, I got to the venue as early as 5am and that was how the journey started. It’s a show I had always wanted to be a part of especially at this particular point in my life when I want to switch from the corporate life to entertainment. It just seemed like the perfect platform for me”.
On his family reaction after he quit the job;
” My father was very concerned because he wondered why I would leave a paying job for something like Big Brother but he also knows my personality. I tried as much as possible to keep the job before I went for the show but it seemed quite impossible so I had to quit. Initially, I did not inform my father about my decision, I had to hide that fact from him but after I have got to this stage, I cannot go back to banking immediately”.
On his age controversy;
It is not surprising that they did not believe me. I feel that the reason they did not believe me is because of my accomplishments, not many people of my age have done what I have achieved in life. I graduated from school at18, I worked for about four years and within that time, I have also done my Chartered Financial Analyst level one qualification; it is a reputable finance qualification.
I still have two more levels to go. To a lot of people, it is really hard to believe especially if they compare it with their life or other people’s standard. I have not always been the smartest kid but I have always been smart in my own way. I graduated from school with a Second Class Upper degree even though I was the youngest in my class. I come from a family where you are taught to be hard working. At that young age, I had some distractions but I knew that I could not attend the university without finishing without a very good result”.
On his trouble with Cee-c, he said;
”Going into a place and being stuck with about 20 people, you would get to know everybody on the surface level and later bond with some other people on a deeper level. Initially, when I was the head of house, she opted to stay with me and I chose her, we started talking and it was a very natural bond because we had genuine conversations.
I felt that she was a smart girl and we could flow mentally which is something I find very attractive in a woman. But I think over time, we saw other parts of us we did not quite like, so we had our several fallout. Now that the game show is over, I am hoping to have a better relationship because I think the house put some of us under a certain pressure and we did not act as we would normally do in reality.
On How did you cope with the verbal abuse she subjected him to;
I was raised in a family where violence is never an option and I am also in a society where violence can never be an option. Personally, I do not believe in violence and I have learnt that in life, you should respect women because they go through a lot of emotions. Sometimes they do not have the full capacity to maintain or control their emotion; so with all that in mind, I was able to hold back.
Honestly, there were times when we would get at each other and I would say a word but later regret it especially when I went to bed; I felt very bad. I know that there was a time I called her silly and when I went to bed at night, I felt very bad about it. That was a learning process for me because it taught me that no matter how angry I get, I should never react in a negative manner.
Even when she was spitting fire at me, I would not want to say things to hurt her feelings because you don’t call your friends names. If I expressed my anger the way I was feeling, I would have said things that would hurt her and that is not what friends do; friends make excuses for each other and that is what I did in the house and it made it easier for me to cope with every other thing.