Kingsley “Kellyrae” Sule is the champion of Big Brother Naija’s ninth season, having won after ten weeks of intense drama, games, and strategizing.
On Sunday, October 6, 2024, in the BBNaija season 9 finale, Kelly defeated Wanni Danbaki, who finished in tight second place with a vote difference of 3.47%, and Onyeka, who came in second place.
The professional vocalist from Delta State will take home N100M in rewards, which includes a brand-new SUV and an N60 million cash prize. After receiving 35.95% of the vote, he became victorious in the season. He won thanks to his calculated strategy.
He won because of his calculated strategy. Kellyrae selected his recently wed wife, Kassia, as the other member of his couple during a season in which the housemates were introduced in pairs.
For the first time ever, a married couple competed on the show. While we have saw a married competitor, Mike Edwards, nearly win the title, this marks the first instance of a married participant taking home the grand prize. The pair has been together for eleven years, but many Nigerians believed that their time in the BBNaija house would wreck their marriage, as they were only married for seven months before the program began.
The majority of viewers would have wagered that the DoubleKay couple would have been among the first couples to be evicted because of their marital status if a poll had been conducted before the show began to see how far they would go this season.
Kellyrae and Kassia’s plan to keep their marriage a secret in the house produced one of the biggest story twists this season of the show, and in a couple of weeks, a status that typically jeopardizes participants’ chances on the show served as their selling point.
In a calculated move, the couple concealed their marriage from other housemates, forming bonds with them without feeling the need to cling to one another in order to prevent them from forming relationships with men or women. Toby Forge, an ex-housemate, even declared his love for Kassia before he was sent out; she politely declined his advances but established limits. Even though other roommates suspected them of being involved, the two made sure that there was no evidence to support their accusations.
Kellyrae said that he wanted people to be free with them and not target them because they were a couple when BBNaija host Ebuka Obi-Uchendu urged him to explain why he and his wife chose to conceal their marital status.
As a pair, Kassia and Kellyrae never finished last in the voting polls, not even during the first live eviction shows or the last one. Their fan base continued to support them even after the game shifted to an individual race until the penultimate episode, when DoubleKay management decided not to run for Kassia in order to prevent votes from being shared in the finals and allow Kellyrae to win for the pair. Their weeks-long commitment has yielded results.
Their disputes, individual skills, general interaction, and free-spiritedness, along with their romantic moments that made the viewers and other housemates fall in love with them as a couple and as individuals, all contributed to their becoming well-liked by many.
Voting surveys indicate why this season was the most difficult to predict, in contrast to prior seasons where the winner was evident. Regardless, on Sunday, October 6, 2024, he was named victorious and got to take home the N60 million cash prize. Kellyrae was inducted into the BBNaija Winners’ Hall of Fame in just a few short weeks.
