Toward the Recovery of Nigeria’s Stolen Artifacts
What happens when a significant portion of your cultural heritage lies outside your borders? This is the situation Nigeria finds itself, as the country renews talks about the recovery of its stolen artifacts.
Nigeria has pieces of its cultural heritage, vestiges of its history and culture in the form of artifacts, scattered over museums in Europe and North America — public and private, in auction houses and private galleries.
The loss of a huge number of our artifacts is part of our bitter colonial experience. The assault and incursion Nigeria suffered from colonialism included looting the country dry not only of its human and natural resources; but also of its artifacts and cultural treasures. For instance, British troops stole about 4,000 sculptures from the Benin Kingdom during the Benin Expedition in 1897 (a figure that, from all indications, is a gross misrepresentation of the actual). The attack was a “punitive expedition” by a British force of about 1,200 men, led by Admiral Sir Harry Rawson, as a reprisal to the defeat of a previous invasion force from Britain. In the attack, thousands of the artifacts that decorated the Oba’s palace were looted, the sum of which is today referred to as the Benin Bronzes.
The Benin Bronzes were not the only artifacts stolen from Nigeria:
The Nok sculptures, including the Terracotta figurines, were also stolen or smuggled, on a large scale, from the country. Also, baked clay sculptures from Ife, Zaria, Sokoto, Funtua, Katsina, and many other ancient societies were lost to colonial theft.
The government and people of Nigeria had begun to make calls for the return of our looted artifacts as early as in the ’70s, but one remarkable story that represents how far individual efforts can go in the struggle for the return of these stolen artifacts happened in 2004, in a small village called Agenebode in Edo State. A man gave a note that read “please help return the Benin Bronzes” to two British police officers, Steve Dunstone and Timothy Awoyemi, who were on tour around the area. On their return to England, the two officers took up the action of vehement advocacy for the return of the Benin Bronzes kept in foreign museums. They used social media, events, interviews, fundraising, etc., to advocate for their cause. Soon, they aligned with the dominant and influential decolonization movements in Europe and American institutions.
Breakthroughs began to emerge after a groundbreaking report co-authored by French art historian Benedicte Savoy and Senegalese academic writer Felwine Sarr recommended a permanent repatriation of African cultural legacy in the form of artifacts looted during colonialism, artifacts which the authors insist were acquired through “theft, looting, despoilment, trickery, and forced consent.” The implication of this report has been far-reaching, mounting pressure not only on French museums but also other international museums holding and displaying artifacts stolen from Africa. This pressure was reinforced by the Black Lives Matter protest in 2020, when the anger of protesters against slavers and colonialists soon turned toward Western museums comprising mainly of artifacts stolen from Africa, a situation that depicts Africa’s brutal colonial history. In the heat of this protest, activists urged Western governments to “decolonize” their museums.
The over 100 years struggle is yielding results: Germany is bowing to the pressure by officially announcing that it will begin returning the Benin Bronzes in its possession (over 1,000 artifacts) from 2023, also offering, along with the British museums and some other foreign institutions, to help build the Edo Museum of West African Art in Benin City set to open in the same year.
The government on its part has also been pushing for the return of these artifacts. It launched a campaign in 2019 for the repatriation of stolen artifacts, calling on all Nigerians, especially the elites, to join. And according to Prof. Abba Tijani, director-general, National Council of Museums and Monuments, we are making progress:
Museums across the world are reaching out to negotiate the terms of the release of our artifacts in their possession. The Netherlands returned a 600-year-old Ife Terracotta head. Jesus College, at the University of Cambridge, has also promised to return Benin’s famous bronze cockerel. Also, the United States, under the Convention on Cultural Property Implementation Act (CPIA), has determined that any cultural property 250 years or older will not enter the United States from Nigeria, unless with the official approval of Nigeria.
In other efforts toward this goal, Nigerians created the Legacy Restoration Trust, an independent body saddled with the responsibility of negotiating with foreign museums for the release of the Nation’s stolen artifacts. So far we have active engagements with several of these foreign institutions in the United States, Ireland, the Church of England, Germany, etc.
At ATD we are actively advocating for the return of stolen artifacts. As a way of lending our voice to the appeal for their return, we have a section at the Discovery Museum that contains replicas of several artifacts stolen from Nigeria. Amanda, ATD’s curator, had this to say: “What we’re doing here is that we’re showing that we can still tell the same story about our colonial legacy by using replicas of our stolen cultural heritage. While telling our cultural story, we are also telling the colonial story and the continued colonial violence and subjugation, highlighting the fact that museums around the world holding the originals of these replicas ought to return them.”
We plan to keep these replicas displayed at the Discovery Museum until the originals are returned.
