Sir: Recently, the Museum Volkenkunde in Leiden, or folk art museum, Netherlands reached an agreement with Nigeria’s National Commission for Museums and Monuments to facilitate the repatriation of about 112 bronze artefacts looted from Benin, Edo State.
The repatriation when it happens will be the latest instalment in a long line of efforts made by the Nigerian government to recover priceless artefacts looted from the country during colonial times. Already, dozens of artefacts have been recovered by the country. But such was the scale of plunder of a people’s material culture that many more artefacts lying loose in European museums are yet to be recovered.
Nigeria was not the only victim of this theft of epic and historic proportions. Many other countries which were victims of such colonial heists have been vocal in demanding that what they lost be returned to them. It is noteworthy that other Dutch Museums have also been busy repatriating artefacts looted during colonial times from the Dutch East India Company’s holding in Indonesia and Sri Lanka.
In total, the repatriations include the ‘Lombok treasure’, consisting of 335 objects from Lombok in the Lesser Sunda Islands of Indonesia, four statues from the Javan Hindu kingdom of Singasari, 132 objects of modern art from Bali, and from Sri Lanka—a cache of ceremonial weapons from the city-states of Kandy and others including a royal canon made of gold, silver, and rubies.
While it is almost impossible to describe colonialism in a few words, there is no doubt that colonialism was by a large an unprecedented spree of looting and plunder against people that were at the mercy of ruthless occupiers.
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These occupiers as savage as they were, cared little about the welfare of the people they occupied in the short and long run. What was uppermost in their twisted minds was access to the resources that were abundant in their colonies, which meant that even the most vicious forms of exploitation were permissible as a means to an end.
Colonialism was a vicious attack on the culture of the colonized. This culture often found expression in intangible resources like language and material resources like artefacts and artwork. Their presence in the museums of colonizers around the world remains an ongoing insult to the sensibilities of people who suffered unimaginable injustice under colonialism.
Each of those artefacts must be returned. Nothing will make up for the atrocities of colonialism or measure the loss it occasioned but returning what is left of the loot will be a tiny but consequential first step.