Most Western powers, particularly in western Europe, have time and again been forced to confront their grisly colonial pasts – raping, pillaging, looting, was a general feature of this period. In a bid towards making reparations and righting some past wrongs, the Netherlands too has joined the long list of apologists. In February, it’d been reported that they’d decided to return over 100 stolen artifacts by the British, back to Nigeria. This has now been set in motion, officially.
Beautifully sculpted by expert craftsmen from Benin City, in what is now southwestern Nigeria, the Benin Bronzes had been desperately craving a return home, languishing in colonial museums all over the world for the past almost 130 years. These 5,000 odd artifacts had been looted by British troops from Benin City in 1897 – an extremely wealthy capital of the erstwhile Kingdom.
The list of artifacts include including human and animal figures, plaques, royal regalia and a bell. They’d been specifically commissioned for the ancestral altars of past Obas and Queen Mothers, and other rituals to honour the ancestors and to validate the accession of a new Oba.
Spirit and Identity: Storied Artifacts Restore a Sense of Dignity
Olugbile Holloway, director-general of Nigeria’s National Commission for Museums and Monuments, said on Saturday that the artefacts were the “embodiments of the spirit and identity of the people from which they were taken from”, reports Al-Jazeera. “All we ask of the world is to treat us with fairness, dignity and respect,” he said at a ceremony held at the National Museum in Lagos.
- The Benin Bronzes: A Tragic Story of Slavery and Imperialism Cast in Brass
- Study Shows Benin Bronzes Are Made from German Metal
Holloway added that Germany, with its notorious history in Africa, too had agreed to return more than a 1000 artifacts to Nigeria. So far, Netherland’s return marks the largest single repatriation to date! His organization is working hard to restore and recover more items looted during the colonial reign. The British had annexed Lagos in 1861, but officially began colonial rule under the aegis of the Crown in 1900, right uptil 1960 – when Nigeria achieved independence.
Earliest known photograph of Oba’s compound, the ancestral shrine of the Royal Palace
Benin City, May 1891. (Smithsonian National Museum of African Art)
Part of the loot were exquisitely carved metal and ivory sculptures from the 16th to 18th centuries. Most of the Benin Bronzes had been housed in a museum in the city of Leiden. The Dutch government claims it is now fully committed to returning artifacts that don’t belong to the country, according to Marieke Van Bommel, director of the Wereld Museum, reports Associated Press.
Under Sir Henry Rawson, British forces had laid seige to the Benin kingdom in 1897, and forced Ovonramwen Nogbaisi, the monarch at the time, into a six-month exile. The return of the artifacts has been described as “divine intervention” in a handover ceremony in Edo State by Oba Ewuare II, the monarch and custodian of Benin culture. Only four of the artifacts will go in display in the museum’s courtyard, while the rest has been return to Ewuare and his family. The restitution is a testament to the power of prayer and determination, the monarch added.
In 2022, Nigeria’s National Commission for Museums and Monuments, formally requested the return of hundreds of its objects from museums worldwide – tying up with museums across Europe and North America hastily seeking to address ownership disputes over looted artifacts. That same year, 72 objects were returned from a museum in London, and 31 from USA’s Rhode Island. Germany was the first to return over 20 Benin bronzes in a bid to deal with its "dark colonial history", reports BBC.
"With this return, we are contributing to the redress of a historical injustice that is still felt today," Dutch Minister of Culture, Education, and Science Eppo Bruins had said in February.
The British Musuem, site of major protests outside its four walls, continues to house over 900 artifacts – this action by the Dutch may put it under pressure to follow suit eventually. Currently, an act of Parliament prefers a simple transfer. By 2026, the treasures will have a permanent home in Benin City’s new Edo Museum of West African Art (EMOWAA). This centre has been designed by Ghanian-British architect Sir David Adjaye – it promises to have the most comprehensive ever display of Benin Bronzes assembled.
What Took So Long?
Throughout most of the 20th century, cultural restitution remained firmly out of vogue. The common reasoning went that not all foreign artefacts had been stolen—some had been bartered, donated, or purchased in good faith. Provided no law had been violated when they were acquired, then on those grounds, there was no legal requirement to relinquish them.
Numerous curators and institutions contended that antiquities such as the Benin Bronzes were beyond national ownership. The objects, they explained, did not belong to any one nation but to humanity's shared inheritance. Such treasures' stewardship, they argued, should rest in the hands of those with access to the resources and expertise to preserve, display, and distribute them around the world.
A Benin bronze facial sculpure, from the book, Beyond Compare – Art from Africa in the Bode-Museum. (Saliko/Public Domain)
But over the last decades, the moral terrain has changed. Empires' legacies are being questioned, and the ethical blind spots of colonial collecting become increasingly difficult to sweep away. Egypt and Senegal have both built new, technologically advanced cultural museums; Nigeria is now emulating them. One after another, the traditional arguments against repatriation have fallen before the coming of historical truth.
- Western Reactions to the Controversial Benin Bronzes (Video)
- Chinese Artifacts in Repatriation Row Were 'Given Willingly' to British Museum
Opposition still remains. Among the more outspoken voices is the Restitution Study Group (RSG), an American organization calling for justice for the African slave descendants. Its director, Deadria Farmer-Paellmann, maintains that today's Nigerians cannot by default be the recipients of these restituted bronzes.
In an open letter, she argues that the ancient Benin Kingdom made the bronzes from manilla currency gained from selling enslaved individuals—raiding villages with imported weaponry, taking women, men, and children into captivity, and occasionally offering them up in ritual sacrifice. The artefacts, she asserts, are as much evidence of complicity in the transatlantic slave trade as they are of cultural achievement.
Keith Merrin, director of the Great North Museum: Hancock in Newcastle upon Tyne, which in January 2022 pledged to return the single bronze in its collection, summarized it beautifully in an interview with National Geographic: “Repatriation can be a powerful cultural, spiritual and symbolic act, which recognises the wrongs of the past and restores some sense of justice.”
Top image: Photo of the Benin Bronzes display at the British museum. Source: Geni/CC BY-SA 4.0
By Sahir
References
Al-Jazeera. 2025. The Netherlands returns 119 stolen sculptures to Nigeria. Available at: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/6/21/the-netherlands-returns-119-stolen-sculptures-to-nigeria.
Gregg, E. 2025. The story of Nigeria's stolen Benin Bronzes, and the London museum returning them. Available at: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/travel/article/nigeria-stolen-benin-bronzes-london-museum.
Kupemba, D.N. 2025. Netherlands to return stolen Benin Bronzes to Nigeria. Available at: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cly8397e7gno.
