As the Guinness World Records continues to gain popularity across Nigeria, another youth, Auyenuro Joshua Babatunde, aka TJosh Signature, has made an attempt the world records by barbing for barbing for 168 hours.
He barbed 186 persons in total including about 15 children lasting for seven consecutive days with only two hours of rest daily from 10pm on June 10.
Babatunde, who dropped out of secondary school in 2004 faced an uphill task as he chose barbing as a profession. This is because he family, friends and neighbours expressed disappointment in his chosen profession, saying “there is no life, no future in barbing,” se they refused to support him.
“Despite facing discouragement from my family, friends, neighbours and even from society in general, I chose to continue and today I am where I am. Barbing has enabled me to meet several dignitaries and celebrities, and I’ve been able to achieve both financially and materially, what most of my mates who continued their education to graduate level still see as a mirage.
“That is why I chose to correct this erroneous notion that there are no prospects of a better life for barbers and their situation is hopeless. With what I’ve done now, once it gets the recognition from the Guinness Book of World Records, I want to capitalise on it and create what I call 1,000 barbing seats in every state of the federation and the Federal Capital Territory, FCT, which is going train at least a thousand youths in each state and the FCT, not only in barbing, but in hair dressing, tailoring and various other trades so as to discourage these youths from like drug abuse and other social vices.
“I therefore want to use this medium to inform the minds of the 36 state governors and the minister of the FCT, to be ready to give us the needed plots of land for the training centres.”
According to TJosh Signature, the entire video of the 15h hours of him barbing accorss seven days, amounted to about seven terabytes which was forwarded to the Guinness Records.
When finally recongnised, TJosh hopes to join the list of the at least 37 Nigerians who have won the notable world records. This includes the three entrants from 2023 who are: Divine Ikubor aka Rema, who made history in May 2023 as the first artist to top the MENA charts setting a new Guinness Book of Records for his track, Calm Down, which was released on February 11, 2022 and was one of the fastest songs to get over 100 million streams on Spotify.
Others are, Nigerian chef, Hilda Baci who on May 15, 2023 broke the Guinness World Record for the longest cooking time of 87 hours, 45 minutes, and 00 seconds set by Chef Lata Tondon in Rewa, India, in 2019, and Tunde Onakoya, who alongside his U.S. counterpart, Shawn Martinez is the latest Nigerian to break the Guinness World Record after an unprecedented and uninterrupted 60-hour chess session.
