The University of Aberdeen said on Thursday
it would return a Benin Bronze to Nigeria
within weeks, one of the first public
institutions to do so more than a century
after Britain looted the sculptures and
auctioned them to Western museums and
collectors.
The university said the sculpture of an Oba,
or ruler, of the Kingdom of Benin, had left
Nigeria in an “extremely immoral” fashion,
leading it to reach out to authorities in 2019
to negotiate its return.
Pressure has mounted to return to their
places of origin the Benin Bronzes – actually
copper alloy relief sculptures – and other
artefacts taken by colonial powers.
Neil Curtis, Aberdeen’s head of museums
and special collections, said the Bronze,
purchased in 1957, had been “blatantly
looted.”
“It became clear we had to do something,”
Curtis said.
Professor Abba Isa Tijani, director general of
Nigeria’s National Commission for Museums
and Monuments, said the importance of
displaying the Bronze inside Nigeria for the
first time in more than 120 years was
inexpressible.
“It’s part of our identity, part of our heritage…
which has been taken away from us for many
years,” Tijani said.
Britain’s soldiers seized thousands of metal
castings and sculptures from the Kingdom of
Benin, then separate from British-ruled
Nigeria, in 1897.
The British Museum, which holds hundreds
of the sculptures, has alongside several other
museums formed a Benin Dialogue Group to
discuss displaying them in Benin City, some
officially on loan. It has said discussions are
ongoing.
Germany is in talks to send back 440 Benin
Bronzes as early as the autumn, according to
newspaper reports, while the University of
Cambridge’s Jesus College said it had
finalised approvals in December to return
another Bronze. Tijani said U.S. museums
had also agreed to return two more Bronzes.
The governor of Edo state, of which Benin
City is the capital, plans to build a centre to
store and study the returned artefacts by the
end of 2021, and a permanent museum by
2025.
Artist and Edo state native Victor
Ehikhamenor said he hoped the decision
would prompt others to follow suit.
“Because some of these things are missing
from our environment, people are not able to
contextualize where we are coming from,”
Ehikhamenor said.
REUTERS
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