Image Confirming Nigerian Chef, Hilda Baci’s 100-Hour Guinness World Records False

On Monday, May 15, 2023, a Nigerian Chef, Hilda Bassey Effiong, popularly known as Hilda Baci, completed a 100-hour solo cooking in a bid to set a new record as the longest cooking marathon done by an individual.

Hilda reportedly made up to 55 recipes and more than 100 meals at Lekki-Lagos, Nigeria, within the five days she cooked to overtake the current record holder for the longest marathon cooking, Indian chef, Lata Tondon.

Although the Guinness World Records is yet to confirm Hilda’s record, she has received massive encouragement, cheers, and support from all over the world, especially Nigerians, celebrities, and politicians for breaking and setting a new record.

She is yet to receive recognition from Guinness World Records, however a viral social media photo says otherwise.

The photo, which started circulating on social media on Tuesday, May 16, 2023, concluded that Hilda Baci has been confirmed as the holder of a new Guinness World Record for cooking for 100 hours by an individual.

The photo was accompanied by a tweet from an account supposedly belonging to Hilda Baci, @TheHildaBaci, which claimed that the Nigerian chef had made history, and thanked all for the love shown them.

At the time of publishing this fact-check, the tweet had garnered over 3000 comments, 15,000 retweets, and 85,000 likes.

However, Fact-Check Ghana’s checks tell a different story about the Guinness World Record badge of honour for the Nigerian chef.

Using a Google reverse image search, Fact-Check Ghana has verified the picture and found it to be misleading.

Results from the search show that the original photo, which was manipulated and being passed on as Hilda’s, belongs to a Canadian education consultant with the account @Theskillgarage on Facebook, and was first posted on May 1, 2023, wishing their followers a happy new month.

Further checks also show that Guinness World Records is yet to honour the Nigerian Chef.

On Monday, May 15, 2023, Guinness World Records said in a tweet: “We’re aware of this amazing record attempt, we need to review all the evidence first before officially confirming a record.”

On Tuesday, May 16, 2023, at 11:48 am, the Guinness World Records reaffirmed its earlier tweet.

 “Our records team is looking forward to reviewing the evidence from Hilda’s epic cooking marathon.”

Three hours ago, the official handle of Hilda’s solo cooking contest said they were working to upload evidence of her work for review by the Guinness World Records.

Hi everyone, thank you for all the love so far.
We’re working on uploading the evidence for review.

Please be patient. 🙏🏾
Thank you. pic.twitter.com/cVkg8YIVTO

— Hilda Baci’s Cookathon (@hildabacicooks) May 16, 2023

An hour later, her management issued a disclaimer about other fake accounts which have emerged following the buzz created around her record-breaking cooking contest.
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Disclaimer: We realized a lot of parody accounts have been created through the 4-day Cook-a-thon. These can be used for things unsavoury to Hilda Baci.

For clarity sake, these are the official accounts for Hilda Baci Cookathon.#Hildabaccicookathon #betonhilda pic.twitter.com/wYPsYil97x

— Hilda Baci’s Cookathon (@hildabacicooks) May 16, 2023

From the above evidence, it is clear that the picture is not connected to Guinness World Records honouring the Nigerian chef but rather a doctored image.

The writer of this report, Joseph Kwaku Kpormegbey, was a Fellow of the first cohorts of the Next Generation Investigative Journalism Fellowship at the Media Foundation for West Africa.

Writer’s email: [email protected]