Olawunmi Bayode Reads Aloud For 5 Days Nonstop and Breaks Guinness Record

March 07, 2018

What kind of dedication and love for reading does it take for a person to read aloud nonstop for five days? Olawunmi Bayode is the man to ask.

On February 26, at exactly 1:30pm (in celebration of World’s Books Day), he began reading aloud and did not stop until 120 hours later, enough time to read 17 books and win the Guinness world record for longest marathon reading aloud. He broke the record set by Nepal’s Deepak Sharma Bajagain in 2008.

It might interest you to know that he has good taste. According to This is Africa, some of the books he read included Toni Kan’s The Carnivorous City, Sarah Ladipo Manyika’s Independence, Leye Adenle’s Easy Motion Tourist, Elnathan John’s Born on a Tuesday, and President Obama’s The Audacity of Hope. For those of you wondering, Bayode did take one two-hour break each day.

His reading was a public event held at the Herbert Macaulay Library in Yaba. This is Africa reports that he was sponsored by the GTBank YouRead Initiative, the same Corporate Social Responsibility project responsible for Dusty Manuscript Contest.

The responses from Nigerians have been overwhelmingly positive. All the major news outlets carried the story. Congratulatory messages poured on Twitter and Facebook from fans. Former Vice-President Atiku expressed excitement at the news.

I am excited to read the news about our own dear @iread_bayode. He has not only set a new Guinness World Record in the ‘Longest Marathon Reading Aloud’ category, but he has also brought attention to reading, an important building block of education.https://t.co/5qFwkegjx5

— Atiku Abubakar (@atiku) March 4, 2018