Netherlands returns 119 artifacts looted from Nigeria

The Netherlands on Thursday returned 119 artifacts looted from Nigeria, including human and animal figures, plaques, royal regalia and a bell.

British troopers looted the artifacts, is called the Benin Bronzes and largely housed in a museum in Leiden, in the slack nineteenth century.

Currently, museums across Europe and North America gain moved to handle possession disputes over artifacts looted throughout the colonial skills. Nigeria’s Nationwide Commission for Museums and Monuments requested that they be returned.

Within the future of the handover ceremony in Edo Whisper, Oba Ewuare II, the monarch and custodian of Benin culture, described the return of the artifacts as a “divine intervention.” Nigeria’s Nationwide Commission for Museums and Monuments requested that the Benin Bronzes be returned.

The monarch talked about that restitution is a testament to the vitality of prayer and backbone.

Marieke Van Bommel, director of the Wereld Museum, talked about the Dutch authorities is committed to returning artifacts that kind now not belong to the country.

Olugbile Holloway, the cost’s director, talked about the return of 119 artifacts marks the greatest single repatriation. His group is working laborious to discover better extra objects looted during colonial cases.

Nigeria formally requested the return of a complete bunch of objects from museums worldwide in 2022. That year, 72 objects had been returned from a London museum, while 31 had been returned from a museum in Rhode Island.

The Benin Bronzes had been stolen in 1897 when British forces underneath the convey of Sir Henry Rawson sacked the Benin kingdom and compelled Ovonramwen Nogbaisi, the monarch on the time, right into a six-month exile. Benin is positioned in contemporary-day southern Nigeria.

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