Long before Nigerians knew her as “Mercy Lambo,” Chinenyenwa Mercy Eke was one of six children growing up in Owerri, Imo State, in a family where making ends meet sometimes meant selling corn and fuel on the street.
She attended Egbu Girls Secondary School in Owerri and later studied Business Administration at Imo State University, graduating in 2014. Her first taste of the entertainment industry came through music videos rather than reality television. Before she ever walked into the Big Brother Naija house, she appeared as a video vixen in Davido and Ichaba’s “Baby Mama” and Airboy’s “Nawo Nawo.” The appearances were small and uncredited, but they gave her an early foothold in an industry she would eventually become a major part of.
Still, getting onto Big Brother Naija was far from easy. Eke auditioned four times and was rejected on each attempt before finally making it into the fourth season, “Pepper Dem,” in 2019. She entered the house on June 30, and four months later, on October 6, she walked out as the winner.
Her victory made history. Eke became the first woman to win Big Brother Naija, taking home a ₦60 million grand prize that included cash, a brand-new SUV and an apartment.
Even after this win changed her circumstances, Eke has remained open about the life she had before the spotlight. At a closed panel session during the eighth edition of the Nigerian Entertainment Conference (NECLive8), she became emotional while talking about how far she had come. “Sometimes it gets me very emotional to see how far I’ve come from where I started, from selling corn to fuel, to a lot of other businesses I did before,” she said. She also spoke about growing up in a family of six and still finding a way to complete university, adding, “I work for everything I own today, maybe I’m not ‘blessed’ enough for people to just give me things for free.”
Her life after Big Brother has largely followed that same pattern of building things for herself. In 2020, she made her Nollywood debut in Toyin Abraham’s Fate of Alakada, then moved into fashion with her clothing line, MNM Luxury. She later ventured into real estate, starting her own company and pursuing what she had described as a long-held dream.
By her 28th birthday on September 29, 2021, Eke had announced that she had acquired her second home in two years. That same day, her fans surprised her with a $10,000 scholarship to Harvard Business School as a birthday gift. She would go on to add television to her growing list of ventures, launching her own reality show, Mercy, What Next?, on Africa Magic. Her drive to keep developing herself also took her back to school in 2025, when she enrolled in an MBA programme at the University of Salford in Manchester.
For someone whose early years included selling corn and fuel to make ends meet, the life Eke has built since Big Brother Naija is a striking change from where she started. The win, the homes, the businesses and even her decision to return to school all form part of the same story she told at NECLive8: she has had to work for what she has, and she wants people to know it was never simply handed to her.
