The Museum of Fine Arts in the US city of Boston has returned two of the famed Benin Bronzes to Nigeria, authorities in the West African nation said late on Monday.
The move represents “the return of a huge part of Nigeria’s history,” Olugbile Holloway, the head of Nigeria’s National Commission for Museums and Monuments (NCMM), said.
“As much as this occasion is symbolic to Benin, it is also symbolic to Nigeria’s struggle,” he added.
The Benin Bronzes are hundreds of sculptures and plaques that were looted from the royal palace in the Kingdom of Benin, part of modern-day Nigeria, after British forces captured Benin City in 1897.