The Kenya Times has learnt that some six artefacts looted by British troops 125 years ago from Nigeria, then known simply as Benin City, have been returned to their place of origin.
The objects, including two 16th-century Benin bronze plaques ransacked from the royal palace, were handed to Abba Tijani at a ceremony at the Horniman Museum in south London on Monday, according to Harriet Sherwood. Tijani is the director general of Nigeria’s National Commission for Museums and Monuments (NCMM).
“The six artefacts handed over on Monday were selected as being representative of 72 Benin items in the Horniman’s collection,” Tijani writes.
Similarly, a cockerel sculpture and the head of an oba (ruler) held by Jesus College and Aberdeen University have been returned from Britain to Nigeria. The bronzes are believed to have been stolen in 1897, “when British forces sacked the Benin kingdom.”
The British Museum, on the other hand, has constantly refused to return royal treasures that Britain stole from the Benin Kingdom, attributing the decision to the British Museum Act of 1963 and the Heritage Act of 1983.
Lai Mohammed, Nigeria’s culture minister, asked British Museum to return the properties it looted from Africa including the 29 bronzes from Nigeria.
“It’s not if, it’s when. They will eventually have to return these because the campaign is gaining strength by the day and, when they look at what other museums are doing, they will be compelled to return them,” he said at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington last month.
The artefacts, Lai emphasised, speak to who Africans are and speak to Africans’ history, their religion, values and ethics.
Earlier this year, according to Tijani, Germany handed over two Benin bronzes and put more than 1,000 other items from its museums’ collections into Nigeria’s ownership.
Annalena Baerbock, the German foreign minister said: “It was wrong to take the bronzes and it was wrong to keep them. This is the beginning to right the wrongs.”
An agreement between the NCMM and the Horniman will allow the remaining 66 objects to stay in the UK on loan for the next 12 months, with a second phase of repatriations to come, as per Tijani.
