The University of Aberdeen is set to return a controversial Benin bronze within weeks. This comes after a review found the item had been acquired in controversial circumstances and auctioned to Western museums and collectors.
The university said on Thursday that 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” 124 years ago by British soldiers. It became clear we had to do something,
Curtis 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 university called it “one of the most notorious examples of the pillaging of cultural treasures associated with 19th-century European colonial expansion”.
“It would not have been right to have retained an item of such great cultural importance that was acquired in such reprehensible circumstances,”
George Boyne – University Vice-Chancellor
Nigeria’s Minister of Information and Culture Lai Mohammed called the move a “step in the right direction” and urged other holders of Nigerian antiquity “to emulate this”.
Godwin Nogheghase Obaseki, Governor of Edo state, plans to build a centre in Benin City, the state capital to store and study the returned artefacts by the end of 2021, and a permanent museum by 2025.
