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.<\/p>\n
The artefacts, collectively known as the Benin<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n Neil Curtis, head of collections at the University of Aberdeen, with a bronze sculpture depicting an oba (king) of Benin in 2021. Photograph: Courtesy of University of Aberdeen<\/p>\n Their return and public display inside the $25m (\u00a319m) state-of-the-art museum in the city of Benin in Nigeria\u2019s 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\u2019s stolen art.<\/p>\n Yet when MOWAA opens its doors on 11 November, the only Benin bronzes on display will be clay replicas \u2013 a far cry from the \u201cmost comprehensive display [of Benin bronzes] in the world\u201d touted by authorities when plans for the museum to become their home were announced in 2020.<\/p>\n 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<\/a> and the Netherlands. For now, none are on public display.<\/p>\n If the looting of the original bronzes took place in the context of what has been called the \u201cscramble for Africa\u201d, 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.<\/p>\n Benin Bronzes on display at the Humboldt Forum in Berlin in May. Photograph: NurPhoto SRL\/Alamy<\/p>\n \u201cIn the west, there was a race about who was going to be the first institution to restitute,\u201d said MOWAA\u2019s director and chair Phillip Ihenacho, without naming individual museums or governments. \u201cAnd there was not enough of a focus on to whom they would be restituted to.<\/p>\n \u201cI 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.\u201d<\/p>\n Nigerian demands for the Benin bronzes\u2019 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n European participants in the discussions were of the impression that the conflict on the Nigerian side had been settled.<\/p>\n Race to return<\/p>\n In November 2019, the group invited Ghanaian-British architect David Adjaye<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n The spring of 2021 was to provide a sudden step-change. In a March interview with the German newspaper S\u00fcddeutsche Zeitung, the director of Berlin\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n A flurry of activity followed: days later, Aberdeen University in Scotland announced<\/a> it would also return a pillaged bronze. Then similar declarations were made by the Horniman museum in London, Cambridge University, New York\u2019s Met and the Rhode Island School of Design\u2019s art museum.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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. \u201cIt could and should have been a lot less hectic,\u201d said one official directly involved in preparing the trip.<\/p>\n Nigerian culture minister, Layiwola \u2018Lai\u2019 Mohammed (R), and German foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock, signing an agreement of intent to return the Benin bronzes to Nigeria in Berlin in the summer of 2022. Photograph: Adam Berry\/AFP\/Getty Images<\/p>\n At a handover ceremony in Abuja, Baerbock said Germany was proud to co-finance MOWAA to the tune of \u20ac6.8m (\u00a36m), and \u201cinvited\u201d 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.<\/p>\n People photographing the returned artefacts at the Nigerian foreign ministry during the handover ceremony in December 2022. Photograph: Kola Sulaimon\/AFP\/Getty Images<\/p>\n 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<\/a> 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<\/a>.<\/p>\n Godwin Obaseki. Photograph: DPA Picture Alliance\/Alamy<\/p>\n