Should stolen African objects return?
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Toyin Falola
May 8, 2026, 7:34:10 AM (2 days ago) May 8
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Michael Afolayan
May 8, 2026, 5:06:45 PM (2 days ago) May 8
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Great and sensational debate! It's like someone farting into one's mouth and pouring honey into it, as my people would describe such a dilemma. You are not at ease to swallow the smelly nuisance, and you are too human to spit out the tasty honey. I truly don't know what side to take on this debate. Honestly, I don't. Here is why:
In the fall of 1982, my good senior friend and professor, the late Robert (Bob) Farris Thompson drove a handful of us who were in his graduate Art History class at Yale University, to the famous Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. I was shock when we got to a section of the museum dedicated to Africa, and I saw the controversial Benin bronze head. I recalled a few years earlier during FESTAC '77 when the Nigerian government petitioned the British and Portuguese governments to bring the head back to Nigeria and the two governments refused, asking for an impossible amount of money as insurance to guarantee that the artifact would be returned to London or Lisbon. It was impossible to get it back to Nigeria, and no diplomatic effort of the Black world helped. Here, right in my face, the object is sitting and shining, apparently loaned from one of those countries. I was sad, almost to the point of depression. Even Bob Thompson as well as my classmates noticed the sadness in my countenance and my silence throughout our journey back to New Haven, Connecticut. It was a debate we engaged in while in class a few days later. Everyone condemned the unfairness and an ethical failure on Britain. Portugal and the US. That was 44 years ago!
Fast forward. three years after that depressing experience, I went back home in Nigeria for my own research. I remembered the African Studies building on the campus of the then University of Ife (now OAU), which housed my academic department also harbored a huge antique collection of artifacts of immeasurable values. I thought that would console me for the pain of seeing the Benin Head languishing in a foreign land, held captive by the greed of some colonialists and invaders. But, sadly, those artifacts in African Studies were gone. I asked for their whereabouts and was told that some staff apparently stole many, smuggled them out of campus, selling them to foreigners who could give them chicken change for them. I think they said some of such folks were apprehended and persecuted, but so what? The damage had been done.
One of my past times was visiting museums, and one of the very best museums in Nigeria was the one located in the palace of the Ooni of Ife. With my bad feeling of the African Studies' mini-museum, I decided to drop by that Ife museum on this same visit. Lo and behold, the same fate had befallen the popular Ife Museum of Art and Cultural Antiquities. It was almost totally bare. The materials have been stolen and sold, almost literally mortgaging our cultural heritage. The ones that were not stolen looked terribly unkempt and unkept! Other than in some private collections, I doubt if there exists anywhere in Nigeria today where standard and decent museums of art and culture, especially with emphasis on antiques are located. My question then is this: Other than the sentiment of "tẹni-n-tẹni," why force the artifacts back home where they are not valued, and where they may end up being damaged, stolen, sold and smuggled back to the foreign lands where we fought to get them? It's a million dollar question begging for a honest answer.
As I said earlier, it's a dilemma, and it remains so in my view.
In the fall of 1982, my good senior friend and professor, the late Robert (Bob) Farris Thompson drove a handful of us who were in his graduate Art History class at Yale University, to the famous Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. I was shock when we got to a section of the museum dedicated to Africa, and I saw the controversial Benin bronze head. I recalled a few years earlier during FESTAC '77 when the Nigerian government petitioned the British and Portuguese governments to bring the head back to Nigeria and the two governments refused, asking for an impossible amount of money as insurance to guarantee that the artifact would be returned to London or Lisbon. It was impossible to get it back to Nigeria, and no diplomatic effort of the Black world helped. Here, right in my face, the object is sitting and shining, apparently loaned from one of those countries. I was sad, almost to the point of depression. Even Bob Thompson as well as my classmates noticed the sadness in my countenance and my silence throughout our journey back to New Haven, Connecticut. It was a debate we engaged in while in class a few days later. Everyone condemned the unfairness and an ethical failure on Britain. Portugal and the US. That was 44 years ago!
Fast forward. three years after that depressing experience, I went back home in Nigeria for my own research. I remembered the African Studies building on the campus of the then University of Ife (now OAU), which housed my academic department also harbored a huge antique collection of artifacts of immeasurable values. I thought that would console me for the pain of seeing the Benin Head languishing in a foreign land, held captive by the greed of some colonialists and invaders. But, sadly, those artifacts in African Studies were gone. I asked for their whereabouts and was told that some staff apparently stole many, smuggled them out of campus, selling them to foreigners who could give them chicken change for them. I think they said some of such folks were apprehended and persecuted, but so what? The damage had been done.
One of my past times was visiting museums, and one of the very best museums in Nigeria was the one located in the palace of the Ooni of Ife. With my bad feeling of the African Studies' mini-museum, I decided to drop by that Ife museum on this same visit. Lo and behold, the same fate had befallen the popular Ife Museum of Art and Cultural Antiquities. It was almost totally bare. The materials have been stolen and sold, almost literally mortgaging our cultural heritage. The ones that were not stolen looked terribly unkempt and unkept! Other than in some private collections, I doubt if there exists anywhere in Nigeria today where standard and decent museums of art and culture, especially with emphasis on antiques are located. My question then is this: Other than the sentiment of "tẹni-n-tẹni," why force the artifacts back home where they are not valued, and where they may end up being damaged, stolen, sold and smuggled back to the foreign lands where we fought to get them? It's a million dollar question begging for a honest answer.
As I said earlier, it's a dilemma, and it remains so in my view.
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Edward Kissi
May 9, 2026, 10:36:56 AM (23 hours ago) May 9
to usaafric...@googlegroups.com, Yoruba Affairs, dialogue
Let me add to Michael Afolayan’s encounter, and dilemma, my own different experience: participation in a “closed-Workshop”, in Johannesburg, a couple of years ago, or more, about this artifact-return issue. It was a conference of Africanists who study Germany’s
colonial history in Africa, and those who look at the connections between German colonialism in Africa, the Holocaust, and Nazi rule in Germany.
The Workshop was co-sponsored by a private group in Germany, the Johannesburg Holocaust and Genocide Center, with some support from the German foreign ministry. I was invited as a speaker-participant by the Johannesburg Holocaust and Genocide Center. There
were home-based African scholars from Togo, Cameroon, Namibia, and Tanzania (former German colonies), and officials from the German foreign ministry.
One of the issues we discussed was the return of artifacts taken to German museums from these former German colonies by German missionaries and colonial administrators, and the challenges (or the absence of any) of returning them from German museums. I
was quite intrigued to hear from my colleagues who came from Togo, Cameroon, Tanzania, and Namibia, that the complexity of the artifact return conversation transcends their safety in poorly-funded and poorly-maintained national museums. Their return also raise
questions about “ownership” since many of the artifacts were not “owned” by the post-colonial African nation-states and governments that are claiming them.
Perhaps like the kingdoms and other communities in Nigeria, these artifacts were owned by families, or artisans who made them, and gave them as “gifts” to local monarchs, and community shrines. There were no “museums” in the former German colonies where
these stolen artifacts were kept. They were owned by individuals, and the conversation about them must include the means by which German missionaries and other Germans in Germany’s colonies acquired these artifacts. So the question we had to wrestle with at
the conference was: to whom should these artifacts and sculptures be returned, and can we even trace their actual owners? And if they were privately-owned, as the historical facts suggest, then could their return not generate conflict over ownership between
the governments of Tanzania, Namibia, Togo, Cameroon (dare I add Nigeria), and citizens and communities who might sue to claim them. I was only an attentive listener to this fascinating conversation. It is not my field of expertise.
I and another colleague from SUNY-Binghamton proposed, at the end of this revealing workshop, that there should be another “Berlin Conference” to discuss this matter of ownership, mode of acquisition, and legitimacy of “new ownership” further. In a post-Workshop
private conversation with an official from the German foreign ministry, I was assured that what we have discussed, and our suggestion about another Berlin Conference over the return of artifacts, will be discussed at the ministry. I will report back if I hear
anything from Berlin, or from my African colleagues I met in Johannesburg.
Edward Kissi
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On May 8, 2026, at 5:06 PM, 'Michael Afolayan' via USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> wrote:
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Dr. Oohay
May 9, 2026, 10:37:41 AM (23 hours ago) May 9
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Fascinating/fruitful LIVED experiences.
Oohay
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Oluwatoyin Adepoju
May 9, 2026, 10:38:58 AM (22 hours ago) May 9
to usaafricadialogue, Yoruba Affairs
Great thanks prof Afolayan.
The Museum of West African Art in Benin City addresses these issues, made more complex and poignant by the conflict between the institution and Benin govt and Oba of Benin palace politics, leading to the possibly still current closure of the museum after its abortive opening.
Toyin
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Dr. Oohay
May 9, 2026, 6:51:21 PM (14 hours ago) May 9
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Thanks for your lucid pro&con arguments, but I sense no dilemma or fundamental difference here; apparently, one side wants to defer for very good reasons, and the other side wants the artifacts back now. Note that our ancestors also participated in the supply chain. “Empires” whether regional or continental or intercontinental did a lot of evil things but they also intentionally or ALSO did SOME GOOD. No (human) empire can claim innocence. O ye without any local or regional or national or international “sin” wave your flag or raise your CLEAN hand. I sense no dilemma in the situation in question —- only a difference in strategy.
Geo-economic-political game “theory” (aka “mereology” as my sub discipline identifies it). Today’s politics has moved beyond checkers. Sovereign nations now play chess or Omaha Poker. By the way, DAVOS or Globalism AIN’T an answer.
Oohay
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