Baba, the giant tortoise at the Alaafin of Oyo’s Palace, is dead. The palace says he was 420 years old. There is no evidence he was.
Baba died on Monday after falling ill and stopping eating, according to Bode Durojaiye, Director of Media and Publicity to the Alaafin of Oyo, Oba Abimbola Akeem Owoade I. The tortoise was buried at the palace. If the palace estimate were accurate, Baba would have been born around 1606, centuries before modern Nigeria existed.
The palace traced Baba’s history to Oyo-Ile, the ancient capital of the old Oyo Empire, before he was reportedly brought to the present palace in Oyo town. Oral history held that he survived through generations of Alaafins. Successive kings cared for him, and the current monarch reportedly met him already living at the palace. Two palace officials were assigned to look after him. His diet included watermelon, corn pap wrapped in leaves and grass.
Baba became a tourist attraction. People visited the palace to see the tortoise whose enormous reported age had become part of his identity. The palace called him an “ageless companion” and said he represented part of the oral history of the Yoruba people. His name, Baba, meaning “father” in Yoruba, carried the respect attached to his supposed age.
The age claim does not survive scrutiny. No birth record or publicly available scientific evidence establishes that Baba was 420 years old. The figure comes from the palace’s oral history and its account of Baba surviving through generations of Alaafins.
Biology also raises questions. Tortoises are among the longest-lived vertebrates on Earth, and scientists have documented exceptionally slow ageing in many turtle and tortoise species. Giant tortoises can live well beyond a century. But documented figures are nowhere near 420 years.
Guinness World Records lists Jonathan as the oldest turtle or chelonian at 194 years old in 2026. Jonathan, a Seychelles giant tortoise, is believed to have been born around 1832. His age is supported by historical evidence showing he was already fully mature when he arrived on St Helena in 1882. For comparison, the African spurred tortoise, a species found in Nigeria, generally lives around 50 to more than 100 years, according to the Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle in France.
That does not prove exactly how old Baba was. His species has not been independently established in the available reports, and tortoise longevity varies considerably between species. But it puts the 420-year claim into a different light because there is no verified tortoise lifespan remotely close to Baba’s reported age.
Baba’s story mirrors that of another famous Nigerian palace tortoise, Alagba. In 2019, Alagba, a tortoise at the palace of the Soun of Ogbomoso in Oyo State, died after being widely reported as 344 years old. That age was also an estimate. Toyin Ajamu, then Soun’s private secretary, told Punch that nobody had been present when Alagba was brought to the palace. The palace had calculated the tortoise’s age from the period when the Soun believed to have brought it to the palace. Alagba’s remains were embalmed and preserved for visitors.
The episode showed how easily extraordinary claims about Nigerian palace tortoises can become detached from evidence. In 2019, Africa Check found that a photograph widely circulated online as Alagba was actually not the Ogbomoso tortoise.
No Guinness World Record exists for Baba or Alagba. What can be documented is their importance to the communities that cared for them. For the Alaafin’s Palace, Baba represented continuity. He was said to have survived successive kings and connected present-day Oyo with memories of the old kingdom.
According to Pulse.ng.
