Restitution row: How Nigeria’s new home for the Benin bronzes ended up with clay replicas

If the looting of the original bronzes took place in the context of what has been called the “scramble for Africa”, as European nations raced to claim overseas territories in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, restitution has in part resembled a scramble in reverse. Western actors tried to outbid each other to atone for their past, before authorities in Nigeria had settled old rivalries about what restitution precisely entailed

Philip Oltermann in Berlin and Eromo Egbejule in Abidjan

IN a corner of the new Museum of West African Art, visitors can marvel at a sample display of the cultural treasures that adorned the royal palace that once stood in its place: a proud cockerel, a plaque with three mighty warriors, a bust of a king with a glorious beaded collar.

The artefacts, collectively known as the Benin bronzes, were looted by British colonial forces who went on to burn down the palace in a punitive expedition in 1897. In the decades that followed they were scattered across collections in Europe and America.

Their return and public display inside the $25m (£19m) state-of-the-art museum in the city of Benin in Nigeria’s Edo state, co-funded by European governments and western enterprises, was to be the crowning moment of an almost century-long effort to reclaim Africa’s stolen art.

Yet when MOWAA opens its doors on 11 November, the only Benin bronzes on display will be clay replicas – a far cry from the “most comprehensive display [of Benin bronzes] in the world” touted by authorities when plans for the museum to become their home were announced in 2020.

About 150 original bronzes have been returned to Nigeria over the last five years, some on the initiative of private collections and some as acts of state by Germany and the Netherlands. For now, none are on public display.

If the looting of the original bronzes took place in the context of what has been called the “scramble for Africa”, as European nations raced to claim overseas territories in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, restitution has in part resembled a scramble in reverse. Western actors tried to outbid each other to atone for their past, before authorities in Nigeria had settled old rivalries about what restitution precisely entailed.

“In the west, there was a race about who was going to be the first institution to restitute,” said MOWAA’s director and chair Phillip Ihenacho, without naming individual museums or governments. “And there was not enough of a focus on to whom they would be restituted to.

“I think that there was a well-intentioned effort that was focused very much around being seen to be a pioneer in this area. But a lot of people in the west failed to understand the complexities within those countries.”

Nigerian demands for the Benin bronzes’ return, first voiced in the 1930s, were widely shunned by western governments and institutions until 2007, when a consortium of European museums and Nigerian officials formed the Benin Dialogue group.

On the Nigerian side, the group included not just representatives of the federal Nigerian government, but also of Edo state, where the kingdom of Benin was once located, and of Ewuare II, the descendant of the royal family that once owned the bronzes, known as the Oba of Benin.

Which of these three parties were entitled to the bronzes upon their return has historically been a bone of contention. The Oba has argued that since they were looted from the palace, they should be returned to the descendants and not to Edo state.

European participants in the discussions were of the impression that the conflict on the Nigerian side had been settled.

Race to return

In November 2019, the group invited Ghanaian-British architect David Adjaye to come up with plans for a new museum where the returned treasures could be stored and put on public display. Still, to the frustration of officials in Nigeria and activists in Europe, there were no concrete announcements on physical returns.

The spring of 2021 was to provide a sudden step-change. In a March interview with the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung, the director of Berlin’s newly opened Humboldt Forum let slip that the museum was considering leaving symbolic empty spaces where it had intended to display Benin bronzes from its collection, with the originals returning to Nigeria.

The comment surprised German government officials, who were in west Africa to discuss repatriations with their Nigerian counterparts, and set high expectations among the public and other organisations.

A flurry of activity followed: days later, Aberdeen University in Scotland announced it would also return a pillaged bronze. Then similar declarations were made by the Horniman museum in London, Cambridge University, New York’s Met and the Rhode Island School of Design’s art museum.

Museum officials suggest the pace of these developments was also fanned by the Nigerian cultural heritage agency, whose representatives were jetting around the world to strike return deals.

In December 2022, a German state delegation travelled to Nigeria with 21 bronzes packaged in crates in the belly of the government plane, an initiative pushed for by the then foreign minister Annalena Baerbock, of the German Green party, who was eager to make her mark a year into office. “It could and should have been a lot less hectic,” said one official directly involved in preparing the trip.

At a handover ceremony in Abuja, Baerbock said Germany was proud to co-finance MOWAA to the tune of €6.8m (£6m), and “invited” her counterpart to exhibit the bronzes there. It was a grand, pathos-filled moment but underneath the surface, tensions that the Europeans believed had been laid to rest were bubbling up again. Present at the ceremony were ministers of the federal Nigerian government and representatives of Edo state, but not the Oba.

There was a personal flavour to the animosity: Godwin Obaseki, the then governor of Edo state, is a direct descendant of a former palace official who had been named Benin prime minister by the British after the punitive expedition and is still seen in some circles as a betrayer of the kingdom. Media outlets loyal to the palace accused Obaseki of having set up MOWAA in order to hijack the restitution process, calling for its occupancy licence to be revoked.

The tussle over the bronzes was ended in an abrupt fashion on 23 March 2023, when Nigeria’s federal government announced in an official gazette that the Oba of Benin was the stolen treasures’ rightful owner and custodian, and that they must be stored within his residence in Benin City unless the royal family decided otherwise.

The move caused howls of outrage among those in Europe who had been sceptical of the restitution in the first place. Centre-right German daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung called it “a fiasco”, suggesting that the bronzes would be locked away in the Oba’s private residence with no access for the public.

This is unlikely to be the case: a former cultural centre adjacent to the Oba’s residence is rumoured to be earmarked as a designated future museum. “The new name will be Benin Royal museum and this is where they plan to store the bronzes,” said Benin-born Mercy Imiegha, director of Lagos-based Nomadic Art Gallery.

At any rate, inter-Nigerian disputes should not deflect from the urgent need for the bronzes’ return, say restitution advocates. “The Benin bronzes in German museums would never have found their way to Europe if British forces hadn’t invaded the Benin Kingdom and sacked the royal palace,” said Barbara Plankensteiner, director of Hamburg’s Museum am Rothenbaum and co-spokesperson of the Benin Dialogue group. “We are looking at the largest theft of a royal treasure in history. There was a moral imperative for them to be returned to Africa with no strings attached.”

Andreas Goergen, a former secretary general of the German Federal Ministry for Culture and the Media, said: “Dealing with the art objects of traditional rulers is difficult for any republic. Germany took 100 years to reach an agreement with the Hohenzollerns [the German imperial dynasty that was overthrown at the end of the first world war]. Nigeria took four to reach an agreement with the Oba of Benin. So, no reason to be snooty.”

“The Europeans can’t tell us what we should or shouldn’t do with the objects of our heritage,” said Toyin Akinosho, co-founder of the nonprofit Committee for Relevant Art, which organises the Lagos Book and Arts festival. “Can’t we hold conversations here too about programming of new culture spaces?”

MOWAA, meanwhile, has had to readjust. Originally supposed to be called the Edo Museum of West African Art, it decided to remove the name of the state to emphasise its impartiality.

“We had hoped that we would be able to provide support to the restitution effort by demonstrating that we have institutions in West Africa that have what the west would regard as world-class display and storage facilities,” said Ihenacho. “But we never were set up to be the exclusive Benin bronzes museum.”

One space will host an exhibition about the archaeological dig carried out on the MOWAA site with £3m in support from London’s British Museum, which still holds the largest single collection of looted Benin bronzes in the world.

A selection of about 100 artefacts will hint at the story of the kingdom of Benin and its dissolution. “Some of them may well be made of bronze,” said Ihenacho. “But there will be nothing that was involved in the restitution process.”

• https://www.theguardian.com/news/ng-interactive/2025/oct/12/restitution-row-how-nigerias-new-home-for-the-benin-bronzes-ended-up-with-clay-replicas