“#TheVoiceNigeria What a show. Audience mocking judges, Votes mocking the show, and voice quality mocking the brand. Shame all round” – @seantosky

“#TheVoiceNigeria Season 2 is the worst talent show ever. C as final be like audition” – Twitter user, @iam_TiwaSavage

“This year’s #TheVoiceNigeria is an aberration. A total disgrace to The Voice franchise worldwide…..just had to let that out” – @DeeDahkDutchess

These three tweets aptly capture the reactions of many Nigerian viewers to the finals of just concluded singing competition, The Voice Nigeria.

There had already been major contention with the selection of semifinalists, especially when Team Timi’s Precious and Bada lost out. Of the eight contestants that made it to the finals, our collective hopes were placed in the strongest link from that same team, Jahtell.

At the start of last night’s show, anticipation had sufficiently built and when host, IK Osakioduwa began immediately to announce the contestants who would not make it to the top 4 from each team and Jahtell was dropped, we knew there was going to be a problem. And it turned out a massive one…

This season of The Voice Nigeria had been characterised by flaws from the very start so when it came down to voting, one could already predict a disputable end to the show. Much to everyone’s dismay, Team Timi’s Idyl and Team Patoranking’s Ebube were the final two contenders. We could tolerate Idyl, he had had a good run on the show but Ebube? The question was how! How did anyone vote him over the likes of Jahtell and Yimika? We knew it was going to terrible but not on this level.

Idyl was announced the winner and while a fraction of viewers protested the results, others were just glad a bad show had finally ended. The Voice Nigeria will surely be back for a third season but will anyone be remotely interested in its offering?

Here are 4 reasons we may be boycotting next year’s show:

• From start to finish, we could hardly place a finger on what the producers planned for the show. Yesterday’s finals raised questions on why we ended up with one finalist from each team. It was practically impossible that none of the teams didn’t have two of its contestants on the top four. Was it doctored to go that path or it was just a coincidence that viewers chose one person per team? We may be needing answers to this before Season 3.
• The quality of talents that viewers had to finally choose from was generally below standard. Save for a few good names, most of the contestants were not particularly impressive; and we have the judges to blame for this. From the start, a few of them had placed sentiments above genius and left viewers with a combination of few amazing and many subpar contestants.
• Judges running simultaneously as coaches is not the way to go. We cannot overemphasize the overwhelming influence of sentiments in the decisions made by the judges and some of them had lesser control over their feelings but we won’t be mentioning names. Project Fame may not be the best singing show around right now but the presence of a two separate and independent groups of individuals who coach the talents and then rate them.
• The show was hastily done and the short time frame made it impossible for contestants to garner a unique fanbase. Not that three months are not enough to run a reality singing competition but The Voice Nigeria spent the better part of the show running its blind auditions and left viewers weary in the process. By the time we all made it to the Live Shows, viewers could hardly keep up with the identities of the contestants on the show. A good number of social media comments from last night summed up the fact that runnerup, Ebube was largely unknown. The general setup of the show did not afford viewers the opportunity to know the contestants.

Tolu

Your pop culture/entertainment go-to. Music head. Wallflower. I do not like to write. On a mission to decipher covfefe.