Despite the reluctance of the foreign museums in the custody of stolen Nigerian artefacts to part with them, the planned return of looted Benin Bronzes, among other successes, attests to the federal government’s resolve to recover these cultural objects. Okechukwu Uwaezuoke reports
“We are coming for you,” the Information and Culture Minister Lai Mohammed had announced before a coterie of culture journalists during a press conference in Lagos. No, these words – beneath which lurked an obvious threat – were not directed at the journalists. They were rather directed at “those who are holding on to Nigeria’s cultural property anywhere in the world” and seemed to have dispelled all doubts about the federal government’s resolve to recover all Nigeria’s stolen artefacts abroad.
At that press conference, which was held on Thursday, November 28, 2019, the minister had launched the Campaign for the Return and Restitution of Nigeria’s Looted/Smuggled Artifacts from around the world, vowing to use “all legal and diplomatic instruments available” to achieve this goal.
Nearly two years later, at another press conference held in Lagos on Saturday, July 17, the minister crowed about the successes the federal government had recorded so far. “I can report back to Nigerians that our efforts at repatriating Nigeria’s looted artefacts are achieving positive results,” he announced. “The work ahead remains tough and daunting, but we will not relent until we have repatriated all our stolen and smuggled antiquities.”
Perhaps, the “most remarkable” among these positive results is the planned repatriation of 1,130 Benin bronzes to Nigeria, which was already engendering so much tension between the Edo State Governor Godwin Obaseki and the Oba of Benin, over who gets to keep them. A high-level Nigerian delegation, which included the governor and a crown prince representing the Oba, was recently led by Mohammed to Berlin, Germany “to iron out the modalities for the repatriation.” The delegation had, while in Germany, met with the German Minister of State for Culture and the Media Professor Monika Grütters, the German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas, the State Secretary in the German President’s office Stephan Steinlein, the President of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation Hermann Parzinger and his team as well as with the directors of at least 20 major museums. “The negotiations were tough. but fruitful. We have agreed that there is no going back on the issue of returning the Benin bronzes,” Mohammed added.
On the controversy over the possession of the yet-to-be-returned artefacts, the minister reminded the audience that “in line with international best practice and the operative conventions and laws, the return of the artefacts is being negotiated bilaterally between the national governments of Nigeria and Germany.”
This implies that the federal government will take possession of the returning antiquities, a right, which the minister said, the government has always exercised even in cognisance of the culture that produced them. “Nigeria is the entity recognised by international law as the authority in control of antiquities originating from Nigeria,” he clarified. “The relevant international conventions treat heritage properties as properties belonging to the nation and not to individuals or subnational groups. For example, the 1970 UNESCO Convention, in its Article 1, defines cultural property as property specifically designated by that nation. This allows individual nations to determine what it regards as its cultural property. Nevertheless, the Nigerian state – through the Federal Ministry of Information and Culture and the National Commission for Museums and Monuments – has, in working assiduously over the past years to repatriate our looted artefacts, carried along our important traditional institutions and state governments.”
This explains the presence of the representatives of the Edo State government and the Royal Benin Palace in discussions and negotiations that eventually culminated in the antiquities’ impending return. “At the meetings in Germany, I insisted, and it was resolved that provenance research on the Benin Bronzes cannot and must not delay their return, since the origin of Benin objects is not a subject of dispute as such objects are only associated with the Benin Kingdom,” the minister disclosed. “On the German authorities’ proposal to return a ‘substantial part’ of the Benin Bronzes. I have asserted the stand of the Nigerian government by demanding [the] full and unconditional release of the artefacts. Concerning recording the artefacts in 3D formats for posterity and academic sake under the ‘digitalbenin’ project, of which we are a part, I have told the Germans that this work of digitalising the Benin Bronzes must not delay the return of the artefacts and that issues related to copyrights ownership and other rights over the digitalised objects will be discussed soon.”
Thus, a definitive timeline for the repatriation of the artefacts was agreed upon, “because Nigeria is tired of an indefinite timeline”. It was subsequently resolved that the agreement on the repatriation should be signed in December 2021 and the repatriation should be concluded by August 2022. “I told the Germans that Nigeria is averse to attaching pre-conditions to repatriating the Benin Bronzes. These are our properties, do not give us conditions for releasing them. We, therefore, agreed that the release will be unconditional, neither will it be staggered.”
Other positive results were recorded since that November 2019 press conference. The minister mentioned the return of a highly-valued 600-year-old Ife terracotta in October 2020, by The Netherlands; the agreement in March by the University of Aberdeen in Scotland to return a Benin bronze in its collections; the return of a bronze piece by Mexico in April; the agreement by the University of Cambridge in the UK to return a disputed Benin cockerel and the securing of a date in October 2021 for the repatriation of antiquities – which consist of two important Benin Bronzes and an exquisite Ife Bronze head – from the Metropolitan Museum in New York. “We are currently before the Intergovernmental Committee for Promoting the Return of Cultural Property to it Countries of Origin or its Restitution in case of Illicit Appropriation (ICPRCP) in Paris, where we have instituted a claim against a Belgian who wanted to auction an Ife Bronze head valued at $5 million, at least,” he added. “This Ife Bronze antiquity has been seized by the London Metropolitan Police, pending the decision on who the true owner is. Of course, we all know that the true owner is Nigeria.”
Of course, not all of the minister’s efforts have yielded positive results. Even as he remains undeterred to have these cultural objects returned, he is not oblivious of the fact that “not everyone in possession of these artefacts is willing to return them.”
This became evident months after the 2019 press conference. The minister had matched words with action when he led the concerted efforts to stop the British auction house Christie’s from proceeding with the sale of a couple of contentious Igbo sacred objects (called “Alusi” figures) in its Paris office. The Information and Culture Ministry had on Wednesday, June 17 2020, written a letter to Christie’s – through its parastatal, the National Commission for Museums and Monuments – requesting the suspension of the planned auction of the Nigerian antiquities until the issue of provenance was resolved. But, according to its legal adviser, Babatunde Adebiyi, “Christie’s did not reply until 4.43 pm when all offices had closed on Friday the 27th for an auction that will happen on Monday the 29th. And the reply was to say they had established provenance, giving us no time to address the issue. The set of rules applied by them unjustifiably favours them.”
It is now history that Christie’s ignored the protests against the sale of the artworks, which were from the private collection of Jacques Kerchache (an aide to the former French president, Jacques Chirac) and eventually sold them for 212,500 euros to a buyer on the internet, less than its pre-sale estimated price between 250,000 and 350,000 euros.
That the auction house wantonly ignored calls for the suspension of the sale of these controversial works – which were led by the Nigerian National Commission for Museums and Monuments (NCMM) and two US-based Nigerian academics, Professor Sylvester Okwunodu Ogbechie of the University of California, Santa Barbara and Professor Chika Okeke-Agulu from Princeton University – could not be blamed on the Nigerian federal government.
