It was a love affair that was like no other in the BBNaija Lockdown Season 5. It was a love affair that as they say was made in heaven but couldn’t be because it stared hard reality in the face. It was a love affair that got everybody talking. And everybody is still talking about it, even though it had crashed into smithereens.
This is the story of Erica and Kiddwaya, two lovebirds in BBnaija Season 5. This is the story of two lovebirds that found love but couldn’t keep it. This is the love story of two lovebirds who were the direct opposite of each other and tried to fall passionately in love but couldn’t.
These two characters hit it off as soon as they stepped into the house. They seemed to be boiling with passion, but after a short while, everything simmered down. I remember the first kiss they shared, when just a week after they had arrived in the house, the housemates dared Kiddwaya to kiss any girl for 30 seconds. Kiddwaya, son of a billionaire father from Benue State, left no one doubt where his heart was when he walked to Erica, the girl from Imo State, and kissed her.
I remember the first time Erica was Head of House and Kiddwaya was her deputy (she had to make him her deputy because she had feelings for him then). I remember the heat they generated on social media when both lovers slept together for the first time and they were in heat. Many believed they made love that night, others believed they didn’t make love, that they only made out. But Erica’s loud moans got everybody talking and thinking about so many things.
The question is why did their love affair crashed? The truth is, it was a love affair that was bound to hit the rocks. Like the Titanic, it was bound to hit an iceberg and sink. While Erica was boiling with uncontrollable passion, Kidd was not. Kidd was as cold as ice. Little wonder their ship hit the iceberg and crashed.
Kidd is a spoilt brat, as they say, who had everything going for him from birth and lacked nothing, but never had time for love, never needed love.. He once told Erica that it was risky loving a guy like him. “I just think loving a guy like me is a bit so risky,” he maintained. And when she asked him why, he simply said, “I’m all over the place.”
But Erica needed someone she can trust, not a guy that is all over the place and whom every girl wants to date. She needed security. She needed love. As the conversation wore on, Erica told him she told him she would be busy too and that two of them had different lives to live. “I’ll be busy too. I have my own life. You have yours. I can only love you if I trust you,” she said. But she couldn’t trust Kiddwaya.
However Erica is a beautiful lady who lacked fatherly love. She met her father for the first time three years ago. So she needed all the love she could garner but Kidd couldn’t give it to her. Rather he bored her with his unfeeling and sex talks.
Erica wanted something more than sex talks. She wanted a companion who could share her pains but Kiddwaya couldn’t provide her. She wanted a companion who will always be there or her. But Kiddwaya was not ready to trade his freedom for anything. Kiddwaya was not ready to be there or her. And that made Erica broke down in tears that Friday night.
It started when she said she doesn’t like to chase guys. And Wathoni told Kiddwaya, “You did not chase any girl in this house.” Erica wanted Kiddawaya to debunk that and stood by her. But he did not. According to Erica, that wasn’t the first time Kiddwaya couldn’t stand for her in the presence of the housemates. “This is the second time in public you don’t have my back,” she said.
Erica went on: “I feel very stupid for being with you in the first place … “I don’t have any issues with Wathoni but why did she say you did not chase any girl immediately after I said I don’t like to chase guys? You stood there and did not stand up for me.”
Erica was a lonely girl living in a lonely world, as Fireboy DML, Nigeria’s hip-hop sensation put it in his hit song, Eli. Erica wanted something more than just sex. But Kiddwaya couldn’t give it it to her, though he gave it to her under the sheets. Erica needed love but Kiddwaya gave her sex.
Jean Paul Sartre, the French existentialist philosopher wrote about what actually went on between Erica and Kiddwaya in his magnus opus, Being and Nothingness. Sartre never believed in love though he was in a life-long relationship with another French philosopher and feminist, Simone de Beauvoir, author of the masterpiece, Second Sex.
According to Sartre loving relationships are bound to end in conflict because by being in love one is trading one’s freedom and becoming what they are not, which he terms bad faith. Sartre believes an encounter with the other is a threat to one’s freedom. He believes when one is in love they lose their freedom, they become an object, they lose something.
In this case, Kiddwaya didn’t want to lose his freedom. He didn’t want to trade his freedom for anything. He didn’t want to stop gallivanting all over the place. He didn’t want to stop being all over the place, as he once told Erica. He spelt it to her in very clear terms when he told her he wasn’t ready for a relationship. “My life is not catered to that kind of thing and I cannot make her happy,” he said.
When Prince and Trikkytee asked Kiddwaya why he couldn’t date or settle down with Erica despite the good times they had together in the house, he told them that he didn’t want her to get hurt because she was dealing with somebody like him, adding that that he lacked emotions and affection because he wasn’t brought up like Erica. He also said he had told Erica to stay as a friend but she wanted more than friendship from him.
However, Prince saw the crash coming. He knew Erica was not cut out for Kiddwaya. He knew the relationship was bound to hit the rocks. He knew they were not meant for each other. And he advised Erica to tread carefully. He once said he wanted the duo to end the relationship, as he felt that Kiddwaya was not in love with Erica, that it was just infatuation. He also had some fears, fears that Erica might get hurt in the end. “Kiddwaya and Erica’s relationship is just mere infatuation at the moment… I admire Erica and I think Kiddwaya is just playing along,” Prince said.
That was the reason when Prince was asked which relationship he would like to end to advance his game, he quickly said the relationship between Erica and Kiddwaya. And Prince was vindicated when their relationship crashed. Erica had suddenly found Prince someone he can trust, someone she can “gist” with. Was that the reason she made him her deputy when she was made Head of House for the second time? Your guess is as good as mine.
And she confirmed this when she told Biggie she and Prince gets along but is struggling sharing a bed with him: “My other struggle is sleeping on the bed with Prince instead of Kiddwaya. Prince and I get along and we gist a lot, but as soon as we fall on the bed, things get awkward unlike Kiddwaya,” she confessed.
•••Nehru Odeh is a Nigerian writer and journalist. Author of The Patience of an Embattled Storyteller, a book that foresaw the adoption, rape and murder of females by terrorists in Nigeria, his interests include popular culture, the arts, politics, business and sports.
