OYO, Nigeria — September 17, 2026: The Alaafin’s Palace in Oyo has lost one of its most unusual and enduring links to the kingdom’s royal past: a tortoise popularly known as Baba, whose age was traditionally estimated at about 420 years.
Baba died on Monday after falling ill and reportedly stopping eating. The animal was subsequently buried, according to Bode Durojaiye, Director of Media and Publicity to the Alaafin of Oyo, Oba Abimbola Akeem Owoade I.
For generations, Baba was regarded within Oyo as far more than a palace pet. According to the palace, successive Alaafins cared for the tortoise and inherited it as part of the historical relics associated with the royal institution. Durojaiye described Baba as a living part of Yoruba oral history and an “ageless companion” of the Alaafin.
Palace oral history reportedly traces Baba’s origin to Oyo-Ile, the historic capital of the old Oyo Empire, before the tortoise was brought to the present Oyo palace. This account is central to the traditional estimate of its extraordinary age.
The palace said Baba had survived generations of Alaafins and became a symbol of continuity between different periods of Oyo’s royal history. Two palace officials were reportedly assigned responsibility for its care. Its regular food included watermelon, corn pap wrapped in leaves and grass, according to the palace statement.
Baba also became a tourist attraction. Visitors travelled to the palace to see the unusually large and reportedly centuries-old tortoise, making the animal part of the cultural experience associated with Oyo.
The name Baba, meaning “father” or an elder in Yorùbá usage, reflected the respect attached to the animal’s age. Palace officials said its extraordinary longevity made people reluctant to treat it as an ordinary tortoise. The reported 420-year age should be understood as an oral-historical estimate rather than a scientifically independently verified age. Contemporary reports have noted that no scientific records independently establish that Baba was 420 years old.
Claims of extraordinary ages for palace tortoises in Yorùbáland have existed before. In 2019, Alagba, the famous tortoise associated with the Soun of Ogbomoso’s palace in Oyo State, died after an estimated lifespan of more than three centuries. Its age was likewise based on palace history rather than a documented scientific birth record.
Baba’s reported 420 years would nevertheless place its traditional story deep within the history of the Oyo Kingdom and several generations of its royal institution. The palace’s account presents Baba as part of a broader Yoruba understanding of continuity, ancestry and historical memory. Durojaiye connected the tortoise’s long presence in the palace with the relationship between the living, the dead and the unborn, a theme famously explored by Nigerian Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka in Death and the King’s Horseman.
Unlike the ritual passage represented in Soyinka’s work, however, Baba’s role in the palace was one of extraordinary survival. It remained through successive generations, effectively becoming a living witness to the passage of time in Oyo.
“Baba was more than a tortoise,” the palace said in describing the animal’s cultural significance. Its death, therefore, represents not simply the loss of a palace animal but the disappearance of a physical presence that had become intertwined with Oyo’s oral memory. According to the palace, Baba became ill on Monday, stopped eating and died shortly afterwards. The tortoise has already been buried.
For generations of people who visited the Alaafin’s Palace, Baba had been a remarkable sight: an animal whose presence was associated with the endurance of the Oyo royal institution and whose story was transmitted principally through palace and community oral history.
With Baba’s death, Oyo loses another unusual physical link to its remembered past. The Alaafin’s Palace has indicated that efforts will be made to preserve Baba’s memory for future generations. Baba may no longer walk the grounds of the Alaafin’s Palace, but his story, preserved through Oyo’s oral tradition, has become part of the kingdom’s continuing historical memory.
