When it comes to breaking world records, Nigerians seem to have a hack around it. The determination and focus of many Nigerians have led Nigerians to claim many world titles, including boxing, but this time, we didn’t just break an existing world record, but a fresh new record.
On May 1, 2019, Nigerian publisher and serial entrepreneur, Chidi Nwaogu, posted on LinkedIn that his application to break the Guinness World Record for the ‘longest credit on a book’ has been accepted, and it was ‘time to break this fresh world title’. According to the screenshot of an acceptance email sent to him by the Guinness World Record, his application, with reference number 180410165252lcoa had ‘been accepted’.
The ‘Longest credit on a book’ is a world title given to any single book published with an ISBN, with a ‘Credits’ section that has at least 10,001 names of real people printed on it, who gave their consent to be credited. To achieve this, Nwaogu went on to LinkedIn to get the consent of at least 10,001 people to have their names printed on his book.
His post read: “Publiseer will be publishing a book written by me, and this book will hold the world title for the “Longest credit on a book”. It’s a fresh record, and we simply need at least 10,001 games to break this record. If you’d like to be part of this record-breaking event, simply comment on this post “Count me in” and your name (as it appears on LinkedIn) along with at least 10,000 others who comment on this post, will be published on the book as the credits. Let’s do this together, LinkedIn!“
Within 4 days, over 14,000 people had commented “Count me in”, thus giving the young Nigerian the consent to print their names on his Guinness World Record-breaking book titled “10 Laws of Finding the Right Co-founder”. With 1,516,662 views on his LinkedIn post, Nwaogu was able to amass 5,887 likes, 14,175 comments and 238 shares, as at Sunday, May 5, 2019, 8:18 AM GMT, and these figures are rapidly increasing as I write.
With a huge social following of 34,189 on LinkedIn, Nwaogu, has successfully met the conditions to the break the Guinness World Record for the longest credit on a book. This is a fresh Guinness World Record that hasn’t been broken before, so Nwaogu must be really adventurous to have ventured into this. Nwaogu’s book with at least 14,000 credits will hold the Guinness World Record for the ‘Longest Credit on a Book’, but the question on everyone’s mind is “For how long will he hold this record before someone surpasses his record?”
Nwaogu isn’t the only Nigerian to have broken a Guinness World Record. Wizkid, DJ Obi, Debbie Odumewu, and Kafayat Shafau-Ameh, are some of the Nigerians who have gone ahead in the past to break a world record.
