'Largest royal treasure theft ever'

Why Benin bronzes still aren't on show in Nigeria's newest museum

- Philip Oltermann Berlin Eromo Egbejule Abidjan

In a corner of Nigeria's new Museum of West African Art (Mowaa), visitors can get a flavour of the treasures that once filled the royal palace on this same spot: the bust of a king with a glorious beaded collar; a plaque showing three mighty warriors; a sculpture of a proud cockerel.

The original pieces are among thousands known as the Benin bronzes, which were looted by British colonial forces who went on to burn down the palace in a punitive expedition in 1897. In the decades that followed, they were scattered across collections in Europe and America.

Their return and public display inside Mowaa in Benin City, the capital of Nigeria's Edo state, was to be the crowning moment of an almost century-long effort to reclaim Africa's stolen art.

Yet when the £19m museum, co-funded by western enterprises and European governments, opens next month, the only “bronzes” on display will be clay replicas - a far cry from the “most comprehensive display [of Benin bronzes] in the world” touted by authorities when plans were announced in 2020 for Mowaa to become their home.

About 150 original bronzes have been returned to Nigeria over the last five years, some as acts of state by Germany and the Netherlands, and others on the initiative of private collections. But for now, none are on public display.

While the looting of the original bronzes took place in the context of the “scramble for Africa” - as European nations raced to claim territory in the late 19th and early 20th centuries - restitution has resembled a scramble in reverse. Western actors tried to outbid each other to atone for their past, before authorities in Nigeria had settled old rivalries about what restitution actually entailed.

“In the west, there was a race about who was going to be the first institution to restitute,” says Phillip Ihenacho, Mowaa’s director and chair. “And there was not enough of a focus on to whom they would be restituted.