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ABUJA. – Nigerians celebrated the homecoming of Benin bronzes pillaged during the colonial era. It comes as African leaders are pushing for the restitution of the artefacts from Europe.
Two Benin bronzes were returned to their ancestral home 125 years after British soldiers looted them from West Africa.
A colourful ceremony on Saturday marked the return of sculptures, one of a cockerel and the other the head of a king, to the Oba palace in Benin City in Nigeria.
“They are not just art but they are things that underline the significance of our spirituality,” a spokesperson for the Oba palace, Charles Edosonmwan, said.
The University of Aberdeen and Jesus College Cambridge became the first institutions in the world to return Benin bronzes when they handed it back to the Nigerian High Commission last year.
At the time, Professor Abba Isa Tijani, director-general of Nigeria’s National Commission for Museums and Monuments, urged “other museums and institutions across the world to take this opportunity and follow suit.”
During the colonial era, many pieces were acquired illegally and ended up in European collections. As a result, some estimate 80 percent to 90 percent of sub-Saharan African cultural heritage to be in Western museums.
Musée du Quai Branly-Jacques Chirac in Paris alone holds around 70,000 African objects and the British Museum in London has tens of thousands more.
Britain, Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany have all received requests from African countries to return lost treasures. The return as calls grow in Africa for Western countries to hand back colonial spoils from their museums and private collections.
Last year, Germany announced plans to send hundreds of bronzes back to Nigeria.
As Nigerians hailed the return of the two bronzes to Benin City on Saturday, the president of the neighboring nation of Benin, Patrice Talon, opened an exhibition of historic artworks returned by France last year.
The 26 pieces were stolen in 1892 by French colonial forces from the former Dahomey kingdom, in the south of modern-day Benin.
The “Benin art yesterday and today” exhibition was “returning to the Benin people part of their soul, part of their history and their dignity,” Culture Minister Jean-Michel Abimbola said.
Abimbola said discussions were ongoing to return other objects, including the sculpture of the god Gou, which is still in the Louvre in Paris. – Reuters/AFP
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