“Stolen” African artefacts returned by the progressive West to the Nigerian government have now disappeared, experts say.
A number of Benin Bronzes which were said to have been “stolen” by Westerners from Africa have reportedly disappeared from public view after being handed back to Nigeria, experts have now said.
The Nigerian government has insisted that the artefacts belong to Ewuare II, the current king of the now-defunct Kingdom of Benin, with progressive politicians in Germany making a big song and dance about removing the treasures from the country’s museums and returning them to the African nation for public display late last year.
However, Deutsche Welle and The Times are now reporting that — instead of being put on public view in a Nigerian museum as agreed — the treasures have disappeared completely after being handed back to Ewuare II.
It is now unclear whether the kingdomless king is holding them in a private museum somewhere, has them in cold storage, or has passed them on to someone else, though what is certain is that the Nigerian public has zero access to the treasures as of writing.
Some experts even believe that the African monarch may simply decide to sell them sometime in the future, assuming they are in fact still in his possession, though it is impossible to tell whether this would be to a public organisation or another private collector.
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The disappearance has provoked outrage amongst a number of academics, with Brigitta Hauser-Schäublin, professor emerita of anthropology at Göttingen University describing Germany’s decision to hand back the treasures as effectively gifting them to a single royal family.
“A royal family that, from today’s perspective, also committed the worst war crimes and crimes against humanity until it was subjugated by the British,” she wrote in an opinion piece, describing the family of the African monarch as being responsible for “notorious wars of aggression over centuries with looting, destruction, massacres, enslavement of prisoners of war,” and even “human sacrifices”.
Such criticisms echo those made by an African-American NGO, which denounced similar calls for the British Museum to hand back its bronzes to Nigeria as effectively rewarding the descendants of slavers.
“The Kingdom of Benin, through Nigeria, would be unjustly enriched by repatriation of these relics,” a letter sent to UK authorities by the Restitution Study Group read.
“Black people do not support slave trader heirs just because they are black,” it continued. “Nigeria and the Kingdom of Benin have never apologised for enslaving our ancestors.”
“We want France, UK, USA and other museums to know they should keep the Benin Bronzes for the real victims, the descendants of the enslaved who paid for them with their lives, not the slave traders’ descendants,” it went on to say.
Despite the fact that the future of the bronzes remains completely unknown, with it being more than possible that the treasures may never be put on public display ever again should the Nigerian king want to keep them locked up, Germany has insisted that handing the bronzes back was nevertheless the right thing for it to do.
“Whoever will receive the returned bronzes, which Nigerian institutions and persons will be involved, and where the responsibility for preservation and accessibility lies, are questions that will be decided in Nigeria,” Germany’s Federal Foreign Office said in a statement on Sunday.
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— Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) May 5, 2023