Stolen artefacts will go through travel exhibitions when retrieved-NCMM

The National Commission for Museums and Monuments (NCMM) says Nigerian stolen artefacts to be retrieved in 2022, will be put up for travel exhibitions to generate revenue for the country.

Its Director-General, Prof. Abba Tijani, disclosed this while speaking with Newsmen of on Thursday, in Lagos.

According to him, the exhibition will be from one country to another.

Tijani said that the exhibition was deliberately planned to ensure other nations of the world come in contact with those artefacts to enhance their knowledge.

He said this was important because Nigeria had not been generating revenue from the artefacts, adding that it was high time the nation began to do that.

Tijani noted that NCMM had already created the needed conducive environment for the artefacts to be displayed.

“When these artefacts come, they are not just going to be in a storage or hidden somewhere, we want to make them available to the international communities and Nigerians.

“The artefacts will go through travel exhibitions; they will go round the world and that will generate income for our country.

“The artefacts are now popular, people have heard about them everywhere.

There are many countries that have not seen the artefacts, so we want to give the opportunity to all those countries to see them,” he said.

Newsmen reports that Tijani had earlier disclosed that of the over 5,000 Nigerian artefacts carted away to different countries, NCMM will be receiving no fewer than 1,500 artefacts.

These artefacts will be retrieved from Germany, Australia, New Zealand, United Kingdom and other individual museums across the globe.

Tijani also disclosed that the National Museum Lagos would be expanded as it was observed that enough space needed to be created; to give room for adequate ventilation and to situate additional galleries.

He said the courtyard and other fallow areas would be converted to galleries for exhibition.

“We are going to partition the courtyard into galleries to give room for large exhibitions; the courtyard is a space we are not utilising.

“This cannot be done overnight, we will see if we can put it in our next year’s budget, but definitely the Lagos museum will be expanded,” he said.