Germany on Tuesday returned to Nigeria 22 bronzes of the former kingdom of Benin, looted during the colonial era, during an official ceremony in Abuja.
Thousands of bronzes from Benin, in present-day southern Nigeria – metal plaques and sculptures dating from the 16th to 18th centuries – had been stolen from the palace of the former kingdom.
German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock traveled to Nigeria’s capital to personally hand over the 22 items, which include bronze heads and other works.
“What we give back is part of your story, what we give back is part of who you are,” Minister Baerbock said at the ceremony. “We are here to right a wrong,” she added.
Nigeria’s Culture Minister Lai Mohammed hailed this first restitution, thanking Germany in particular for its “cooperation”.
He also appealed to other nations and museums still holding Nigerian antiquities to ‘release’ them, hammering that these works are ‘our culture and our heritage’, that they have their ‘place’ in Nigeria’ and nowhere else. “.
An agreement was concluded on July 1 between Berlin and the Nigerian government after years of negotiations for the restitution of works which are distributed in about twenty German museums.
The museums concerned by these restitutions are that of Linden in Stuttgart (south), of Grassi in Leipzig (east), the MARKK in Hamburg (north), the Rauten-Joest museum in Cologne (west), as well as the Ethnological Museum of Berlin .
The Ethnological Museum of Berlin alone has 530 historical objects from the former kingdom of Benin, including 440 bronzes, considered the most important collection after that of the British Museum in London.
This initiative is part of a series of measures taken recently by Germany to try to assume the crimes of the colonial period, such as the official recognition in May 2021 of a genocide perpetrated in Namibia.
The bronzes, which are among the most famous African works, were looted from the ancient kingdom of Benin, in southern Nigeria.
Most were looted in 1897, when a British expedition attacked and destroyed Benin City (now southern Nigeria), stealing thousands of ivory and metal carvings in the process.