Return of artifacts: Fear of Nigeria becoming a dumping ground

The Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed recently said that Nigeria had signed an agreement with Germany for the repatriation of over 1,130 looted Benin Bronze artifacts back to the country. Earlier, three museums in the United States had repatriated 31 Benin Bronze artifacts. There are strong indications that Mexico and France too want to return those with them.

It must be mentioned that in 1897, the British raided Benin, where they looted the palace massively. The reigning Oba was taken into exile. All royal treasures were confiscated. Some of these were given to individual officers, while others were taken to London for auction. With this singular act, about 3,000 of these treasured artifacts ended up scattered in museums and private collections across the world.

The Minister, in his judgment believes that the world has seen that it was an ethical and moral thing to return the artifacts back to their original owners, noting that it’s not a matter of law as claimed by the British government. The British government had earlier said that those artifacts in their custody could only be released after it has been legislated.

In January this year, Nigeria and the US signed the bilateral cultural property agreement to prevent illicit import into the US of some categories of Nigerian artifacts. According to the minister, Nigeria is equally planning to sign an agreement with Britain come November 28 to facilitate the release of another 86 artifacts from various museums in the United Kingdom.

Oba of Benin has applauded these gestures. Even though there were arguments between the empire and Edo State government over who receives the returned artifacts, as the custodian when they eventually land on the shores of Nigeria.

Beyond signing of pacts and the subsequent release of these supposed treasures, have we asked ourselves the conditions, relevance and values of these things in the world of today. Are they still intact, in their original forms? Are they still artefactual?

The suspicion is borne out of the events of slave trade and its abolition. The Transatlantic Slave Trade existed from 16th to the 19th centuries. This involved the transportation of enslaved Africans by slave traders to the Americas. The black slaves were condemned to laborious services in farm plantations in the West Indies.

Around 1800, there was an Industrial Revolution in Europe. This brought about improvements in agriculture, benefiting the British economy. Since profits were the main cause of starting a trade, and slave trade ceased to be profitable, with consequential decline in its economic importance, An Act for the Abolition of Slave Trade was legislated officially in 1807 as an Act of Parliament of the United Kingdom prohibiting the trade in the British Empire. This marked the beginning of the end of the ‘Triangular Trade’, as it was called then.

Almost immediately, missionaries were deployed to the shores of Africa. This time, they came with the 3 ‘Cs’ i.e Christianity, Commerce and Civilization. Their coming was political, as religion was being control by the government. The missionaries were commissioned to preach equality of all men before God, thus condemning slavery.

The truth of the matter was that the slaves became so redundant with the invention of machines. The blacks increased overwhelmingly in their number. The Europeans now saw them as burden. Consequently, the British sought and found  resettlement colonies for the freed slaves in Liberia and Sierra Leone.

In the same vein, could it not be that the artifacts have outlived their relevance?  It has always been argued that the “Europeans came for our goods and not our good”. As much as we welcome the return of the artifacts, we need to dig deep into the reasons why they’re returned. Why now, since how many centuries? How much of historical values do they still possess? What are their conditions, relevance and values? Do they still possess economic values? Or like the freed slaves, do they need another dumping sites, just like other ‘tokunbo’ stuffs?

We feel these questions should come to the fore in analysing the return of the artifacts. These are things taken away when they were invaluable. Have they not depreciated? Are they harmful now? Could they still be treasured? Of what benefits would they turn out to be in our contemporary times if returned? What would they add to us?

If the answers to these burning questions are not in the positive, some of these items must be refused in order that Nigeria and Africa at large do continue to be a dumping ground.