Faced with accusations from the opposition that the government acted naively, lawmakers from Germany’s ruling parties defended their decision to return 22 Beninese bronzes unconditionally in Nigeria last year.
A statement by the outgoing President of Nigeria appointing the oba of Benin as owner Returning artefacts sparked dismay in Germany that World Heritage could disappear into the private royal collection and not be on public view. Today’s parliamentary debate came after a series of press articles calling the return of the bronzes a “fiasco” and a “scandal”.
“Is it a scandal? asked Helge Lindh, MP for the Social Democratic Party. “No, on the contrary, it is a very healthy lesson in humility for all of us. It’s like a test to see if we’re serious about restitution, and if so, some of us have clearly failed. If you return with conditions, you might as well not bother. Restitution with conditions is neo-colonialism.
Last year, the German government, states and museums transferred ownership of more than 1,100 Beninese bronzes from five museum collections to Nigeria, making Germany the first country to return hundreds of objects looted during of the British raid on the Kingdom of Benin in 1897.
The fate of the 22 objects already repatriated will be closely monitored by other countries and museums as part of negotiations with the Nigerian authorities. In view of the current confusion, the University of Cambridge’s Museum of Archeology and Anthropology has postponed the handover of 116 Beninese bronzes to a Nigerian delegation which was due to take place on May 16, according to a BBC report.
Today’s debate in the German parliament was called by the far-right Alternative for Germany party, whose representative Marc Jongen has accused the government of being “hyper-moral”. He said he wasted public money by pledging funds for the construction of the Edo Museum of West African Art (EMOWAA), once envisioned as a showcase for Beninese bronzes. Oba Ewuare II opposes the exhibition of the bronzes at the future EMOWAA and wishes instead to build a royal museum linked to the palace.
“The least we demand from the government is that they stop delivering more bronzes after the trust has been broken,” Jongen told parliament. “Other European countries are now thinking very carefully about whether and how much they want to return.”
In his March 23 presidential statement, Muhammadu Buhari named the Oba as the owner of all repatriated items looted from the royal palace and the kingdom. The declaration also gives the Oba responsibility for the management of the returned bronzes and allows him to keep them in the Palace or “any other place that the Oba and the Federal Government of Nigeria may deem safe and secure.”
But the declaration “has not yet entered into force in Nigeria and there are discussions about how this will continue,” Michelle Müntefering, a Social Democratic Party MP, told the Bundestag today. “The last word on this has not been spoken,” she said.
Western museums holding collections of Beninese objects have conducted negotiations with the National Commission for Museums and Monuments. Abba Tijani, the director of NCMM, said via email that he was in talks with the Nigerian Ministry of Justice to make some revisions to the presidential statement.
