On Eve of Transition, Nigerian Chef Cooks Up A Storm
By Azu Ishiekwene
After weeks of being at daggers drawn over the results of
the last general elections and with only days to the
inauguration of a new government on May 29, one of
Nigeria’s three biggest pastimes – food – appears to be
bringing people together again.
On a good day, the country swoons over football or
music. In the last two weeks, however, Nigerians up and
down the food chain have been flocking to the pot of 27-
year-old Hilda Bassey Effiong, fondly called Hilda Baci,
who is on the verge of confirmation as the new holder of
the Guinness World Records for the longest cooking
time.
Nigeria’s president-elect Bola Ahmed Tinubu of the All
Progressives Congress (APC) and the two other leading
contestants – former Vice President Atiku Abubakar of
the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP); and Peter Obi of the
Labour Party (LP) – who have not seen eye-to-eye since
the February 25 presidential poll, all lined up nicely
behind Hilda’s kitchen from May 11 to 15, invoking the
national can-do spirit on social media. For a moment,
they buried the hatchet.
Also, celebrities riven by partisan politics, friends and
family, and ordinary folks, defied at least two nights of
heavy downpour in Lagos to cheer Hilda. A country
deeply divided by the outcome of the elections appears
to have found a common ground in Hilda’s recipe.
After four days of dicing, marinating, boiling, frying,
baking and grilling, Hilda toppled the 87 hours 45
minutes individual cooking record set by Indian chef, Lata
Tandon, three years ago. The Nigerian set a new record
of 100 cooking hours, with 55 recipes and more than 100
meals.
Yet, when Hilda first announced she was going to
challenge the record it sounded like a joke, even to her.
“I’ve been obsessed about the Guinness Book of
Records,” she told TVC, a Nigerian TV station. “It was out
of obsession that I randomly asked my brother about five
years ago who the holder of the world’s longest cooking
record was.”
In a country where four in ten are poor, attempting a
record in most fields is a long shot. Hilda had seen misery
upfront, especially during COVID 19 when she supported
less privileged communities in Lagos with 3000 meals at
her own expense and came down with the virus. She
certainly does not belong in the class once
controversially described by President Muhammadu
Buhari as “lazy youths.”
Her mother, Lynda Ndukwe, eked out a living from selling
food in open space before she later started “Calabar
Pot”, a makeshift eatery in Abuja’s middle-class working
area.
Mrs. Ndukwe struggled to put her children through
school and by the time they finished, she had barely
enough left in the tank. All she could offer any
adventurous child at this time were her prayers and best
wishes, though once when Hilda competed for a beauty
pageant, her mother parcelled traditional costumes to
her over hundreds of miles.
Though Hilda had tried to make a career as supporting
actor, TV presenter, restaurateur, and Big Brother Africa
left-out, if she was ever going to get a shot at her dream
of toppling Tandon, the cook-a-thon record holder, she
needed to be in form, a far cry from where she was two
years ago.
She was having weight problems and had undergone
liposuction, a process which she later described as one of
the darkest periods of her life. To come through that
period and announce a plan to challenge the world’s
record holder, a task that would test even the very fit
seemed like a bridge too far.
Yet, Hilda was willing to try. Before her surgery that year,
she competed in the continent’s hottest culinary warfare
– that triangular title race among Senegal, Ghana and
Nigeria over a dish of long-grain rice mixed with spicy
stew aptly named the Jollof Face-off Competition.
Hilda, representing Nigeria, beat Ghana’s Leslie
Kumordzie to win the prize money of $5,000, which
seeded her dream for a modest online restaurant service,
“@Myfoodbyhilda”, with the tagline, “Made with love”.
But love alone won’t pay bills. Or make dreams happen.
Hilda took her fate in her own hands and left Abuja, her
comfort zone where she had been with her mother, on a
journey to the unknown.
“Moving to Lagos was definitely a turning point for me,”
she told The Nation newspaper in an interview shortly
before she announced her cook-a-thon date. “The
challenges I faced pretty much prepared me for this
point. I did a nine-to-five and worked two jobs at a point.
I worked as a cook. When I quit, I started my own show
on DSTV. It was called ‘Dine on a Budget.’”
Lagos, Nigeria’s hustle capital described in local folklore
as the teaching place of the laggard and slothful, taught
Hilda more than how to dream big. It instilled in her the
appetite to pursue her dream and also opened her up to
a wider network.
After operating from a tiny restaurant in the first two
years, using mainly home delivery service, she opened
her first big spot in 2022 with four staff and kept her fire
burning by offering online culinary lessons. She even
awarded cash prizes to the best performing students.
By March this year when Hilda officially announced her
intention to challenge Tandon’s record, she had amassed
both a culinary army of supporters and some experience
for the task. She also spent hours in mental and physical
drills. But as she would find when the cook-a-thon
started, the taste of a marathon is in the grind.
“I almost gave up six hours after I started,” Hilda
told LEADERSHIP. “I was tired and couldn’t go on. But I
was encouraged by my mother who stood by me for 14
hours and gave me strength.”
Her mother and the country were rooting for her. In five
days, her Instagram followers grew from 50k to 1.2m. In
the days after she reached the 100 hours mark, the
accolades and offers of endorsement have not stopped
coming.
“One of my biggest goals is that I want Nigerian recipes
to be propagated across the world,” she said. “I want it
to be a normal thing to make Egusi (melon) soup in an
American environment, to walk into any random
supermarket and find Nigerian ingredients. I also want to
inspire young people, especially girls.”
Yet, even before her dish is cold or her record is
confirmed by Guinness World Records, which sometimes
takes up to 12 weeks, competitors are snapping at her
heels.
Two chefs – Liberian Wonyean Aloycious Gaye, and
Kenyan chef Maliha Mohammed (who twice broke the
cooking marathon record), have signalled they would
challenge Hilda, drawing Nigerian trolls who are angry
that competitors can’t wait to rain on Hilda’s parade.
The culinary queen is obviously offering her cheerleaders
what is absent in the menu of politicians. And they’re not
in a hurry to leave her table.
Ishiekwene is Editor-In-Chief of LEADERSHIP
