Gbola Oba is the Managing Director/CEO of Universal Learn Direct Academia Limited, the parent company of ULDA Media Limited. A proud capitalist who believes in free and qualitative human-capital development and surgical welfarism, Oba, in this interview, speaks to the Editor, FOLORUNSHO HAMSAT, on the uniqueness of Celebrity Come Build (CCBNaija), a television reality show packaged by ULDA Media in partnership with Ojis Media Ltd, which demonstrates the skills of building a house from the scratch to completion.
The show that just hits the television screens nationwide, and the social media, brings together select African entertainment celebrities from movie, music and comedy with a view to teaching in the most simplifying ways the process of building a house as well as entertaining. Gbola Oba posits that the reality TV show is the entertainment face that is being used to drive the ideas of the building construction industry, which he considers as long overdue.
Excerpts…
Tell us your name.
My name is Gbola Oba.
What is the CCBNaija all about?
Basically, it is an innovative television production, a reality TV production that is called Celebrity Come Build a.k.a. CCBNaija. It’s a reality TV production that brings about known celebrities and taking them into full basic training of building and construction with a view to letting them to showcase to the Nigerian and global audience that the building process is not so much of a mystery but a science that, if someone were to take the time to understand it, that person would even minimize costs and maximize the opportunities of the building process.
What are the vital goals of the reality TV show?
To be honest with you, the fundamental objectives are, one; we have noticed that many of our youngsters don’t really want to come into acquiring skills and there are fantastic opportunities for scholarships and funding opportunities. So, we believe that the power of the celebrities would let an average young person watching the reality TV show realize that there are sustaining opportunities in acquiring building and construction skills. Two, we want to use this show to galvanize us to stimulate a form of positive revolution amongst middle and low-income earners. We want them to know that when they come together and work as a collaborative forum, they will be able to solve some fundamental problems that they confront as individuals wanting to own their own homes. It’s easy when you and I put resources together.
Would you like to give a breakdown of the process?
It has been in our history. I wonder why people seem to have forgotten it. In ancient times, before colonization, people would use their age-group system to build houses for their mates. On a particular day, they would decide that members of the age-group would not go to the farm; they would go to one of their members’ place and build his house. The next time, that man would also go and join his age-group to build a house for another member of the group. Why is it now that to own your own house you have to look for the land, look for the workers, buy materials yourself and do every other thing yourself? There is no society where building and owning a house, based on that very primitive and individualistic state, have sustainably solved the problem of housing and poverty. We must remember that most of the societies we celebrate today are not sustained based on that kind of out-of-date scheme. Take for example, 60 percent of the GDP of America is residual in the houses that people live in, 65 percent of the GDP of the United Kingdom is in the houses that people live in. How come that the GDP of Nigeria marks housing low, as a GDP contributor? Those are the fundamental objectives of the show.
So, the show also aims to teach viewers how to build their houses by themselves; is that correct?
We actually want them to pick some vital information from this entertainment project to be able to leverage the information and use positively to own their own homes.
What are other expectations that viewers should have concerning the reality TV show?
There certainly are many. On the show, one of the viewers will win a house. Works have already started on that house. One of the highest voting viewers will win one of the two three-bedroom semi-detached bungalows that the celebrities are being mentored to build. Apart from that, every week, a viewer is winning giveaways. Among the prizes are 20 bags of cement, tiles and whatever our sponsors give us. A health insurance company is giving one-year free health insurance cover to one of the viewers. Also, a travel agency is giving a viewer a return ticket to Dubai. An individual is also giving 50 US Dollars each to 24 viewers. It is a very interactive and very engaging show where people will be entertained and benefit from.
In what other aspect is the society going to benefit from this entertainment project?
Like I have said earlier, this is one of the best ways that we can fight poverty in our society. Any society that can systematize how its members can have their own houses over their heads, that society will functionally combat poverty. If you reduce ownership of homes that people live in in your society to less than 5 percent of the society, that society can’t function properly. Less than 5 percent of Nigerians own the house that the majority of us live in. That is one of the reasons we are having the insecurity challenges. If I don’t own an ordinary door in a community, why would I care to burn down houses when there is a crisis in that community? This reality TV show is designed to provide 2,500 homes whose cost would not be more than four to five million naira in cost.
What are your fears regarding the success of this project?
Naturally, if you’re pushing any project as an entrepreneur without any modicum of fear, you will fail. Fear is the greatest asset that a reasonable human being takes to the point of success. Without a reasonable degree of paranoia; that you’re doing what may not have been done before, that you’re walking an unfamiliar path even with all your good purposes and objectives, if you’re not restrained by a reasonable degree of fear, you are basically asking for failure. Do we have fears? Yes we have fears. Do we also see the enormous opportunities not only for material gains but enormous transformative opportunities for our society? Yes we do. This is a project that comes with a face of entertainment but behind the face of that entertainment is a social engineering and social housing opportunity for all. We are about running the contents and people will see that we really intend to use the reality TV show to add value to the lives of those who interact with us.
