Creative Nigerians use Guinness World Records to seek global recognition elusive at home

LAGOS, Nigeria -- LAGOS, Nigeria (AP) — Nigerians have tried to set two Guinness World Records in the past week, with a man dancing for seven days and a movie premiering to an audience of more than 51,000 people, the largest ever on record.

Since 2023, when Nigerian celebrity chef Hilda Baci cooked for 93 hours and 11 minutes, setting a world record for the longest cooking marathon and becoming a viral sensation globally, there has been a deluge of record attempts in Nigeria, including the longest crying session, a clothes-washing marathon and a massage marathon.

Nigeria is home to an estimated 220 million people and has one of the youngest populations globally. The country has long been seen as an African superpower in the entertainment and creative industries but a lack of investment and government support has left the nation trailing global peers.

The flood of Guinness record bids is a way for creative people in Nigeria to seek the global recognition of their talents, a recognition they say eludes them at home, according to analysts and participants.

“The Guinness World Record is a global platform for the work to be recognized,” said Benjamin Daniel, the man seeking the dancing world record who has worked with the famous Kuti family. Guinness World Records was in the process of verifying the record on Wednesday.

“The people who are supposed to pay attention to us as a people are not doing it. So if the local people are not listening to us, let us run to the global,” Daniel said of the situation of dancers in Nigeria.

In the past decade, Nigeria has wrestled with a dwindling economy and soaring inflation. Unemployment has steadily risen, forcing the young to leave the country and seek opportunities elsewhere in a widespread syndrome called “japa” in Nigerian parlance, meaning “to escape.”

Analysts say the perks of a Guinness World Record can make up for deficient institutional support locally.

“What is different is the perceived value and the reach of the recognition. A Guinness World Record holder can go anywhere and lay claim to their recognition, compared to the achievements they might have gathered in their home country,” David Akinfenwa, a Lagos-based public relations executive, said.

Guinness World Records told The Associated Press that 5,042 people in Nigeria applied for a record between January 2022 and September 2026, with 3,346 record attempts. That makes Nigeria seventh among countries by applicant volume and eighth among the number of attempts.

“Guinness World Records has seen strong enthusiasm for record-breaking from people in Nigeria across a wide range of categories. It’s always exciting to see the creativity, determination and ambition people bring to their attempts, and every application is assessed against the same global criteria and evidence requirements," the organization said.

Nora Awolowo is one of the filmmakers of the movie Black Market that set the record for the world’s largest premiere of a movie, with 51,258 people in the audience.

“Nobody can tell me anything is impossible," she said. "There is no room I walk into now that if I tell you what I have done with my film, you would not put respect on my name.”