Museum professionals are heading to Benin in Nigeria for the inauguration on November 4th of MOWAA, the city’s new Museum of West African Art. Built largely of rammed earth, and with no collection to put in it, the museum in Nigeria’s capital of kidnapping is the curious outcome of a well-meant project.
The Benin Dialogue Group (BDG) was founded in 2007 to address demands for repatriation of brass and ivory artefacts removed when an 1897 British expedition deposed the murderous, slave-selling regime of Oba Ovonramwen of Benin.
Nigerian officials and curators of world museums which hold collections of ‘Benin bronzes’ then discussed for years what might be done. Nigeria, after all, was gifted excellent collections at independence in 1960: but its state museums are unvisited and decrepit, and have been looted by locals. No-one knows exactly what remains of the collections so carefully assembled by British curators.
If the BDG’s member museums did lend or donate to Nigeria from their collections, where could such treasures safely go? Clearly not to the country’s existing museums. Godwin Obaseki, governor of Edo state (whose centre is Benin City) had the solution: EMOWAA, an independent museum – the Edo Museum of West African Art – to house loan exhibitions from Western museums, and perhaps eventually pieces gifted by them.
The British Museum kickstarted the project with over £3 million for archaeological investigation of the site (which has come up with little of significance – basically, rubbish-tip gleanings and the foundations of mud walls). €4.5 million came from Germany. More money was provided for British-Ghanaian architect Sir David Adjaye OM OBE to design a palatial museum. Running costs, once a museum was erected, seem not to have been considered.
Then the wheels wobbled. 2023’s annual BDG meeting collapsed into farce, the EMOWAA project becoming unworkable. Today’s Benin Oba (a private citizen) has never had any interest in museums, displaying his ancestors’ bronzes to the Nigerian people or receiving pieces on loan – he just wants to own them. Nigeria’s outgoing President helped him out here, decreeing in March 2023 that all bronzes restituted by foreign museums were to be gifted to the Oba – which has been happening – and other pieces so returned have never been seen by the people either.
The BDG held no annual meeting in 2024, and Adjaye is dogged by allegations of sexual assault (which he denies); his other work has largely melted away. The German combine Siemens AG has extensive oil and gas interests in Nigeria, and the Siemens Foundation paid for the BDG-organised online catalogue of Benin treasures, Digital Benin – almost entirely those in the world’s museums, with a smattering of ones gifted by Britain in 1960, and nothing at all from the Oba’s hidden hoard.
So the outcome of these years of delegations flying to meetings and expressing “goodwill, co-operation, new paradigms” and so forth is a considerably smaller “museum” made of mud and mainly displaying current Nigerian art, which may or may not house historic artefacts one day: and an online shopping list (Digital Benin) for Nigerians who will go on demanding artworks which have been kept safe, displayed and studied in foreign museums for over a century – and where the descendants of the slaves Benin sold can visit them too.
Often it’s simply a clash of expectations. Recently, German curators visiting Nigeria asked for a meeting with the Oba to discuss their bronzes: sure, His Royal Majesty’s court replied – and the museum professionals would need to provide “plenty” of alcohol and a large cash honorarium. Not seeing how they’d be able to expense these demands, they sent their regrets.
The mud MOWAA has flashy branding and logos by London design agencies, and also big skylights, which is probably just as well: with the nation’s endless power outages, no-one in Nigeria expects the lights to stay on for long. How the new museum’s other ambitions – research and conservation, and the digital resources that it promises – will be pursued without electricity has not been explained.
It’ll be interesting to see how next week’s junketing in Benin is reported. Security for the foreign dignitaries is bound to be massive; Nigeria’s Government advises against driving to Benin due to carjacking and kidnappings, flying is preferable. And the Oba will presumably boycott the event, as he does others where he is not simply gifted more of his ancestors’ blood-soaked trophies to squirrel away.
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I’m sure this dangerous psychopath has another one up his sleeve, and will tell us all about it once Gates gives him the go-ahead.
Just a short delay while they find a new lab. Another from the Wuhan Lab would be too suspicious and the next one planned for release from the Ukrainian labs has been unavoidably disrupted. I predict somewhere in South America.
I thought they did that a couple of years back with Zika?
China announces Bird Flu case in child …Gates rubs his hands?
Fascinating how you have focussed on a few people to demonise.
They do happen to be ‘leaders’ and public health officials – who all joined in together and went along with crazy measures. All incapable of individual thought. Not one wants to shoulder any responsibility, yet this is what they get their enormous salaries for. I say again, leaders…
You should get help.
“And what’s going to happen is that we’re going to see that each individual is going to have to make their calculation of the amount of risk that they want to take.”
You think?
So why are people being coerced/forced to take “for emergency use only” experimental vaccines?
Well quite. surely they should now rescind the EUAs? If there is no emergency
After the greatest ever clinical trial, we can assume permanent approved.
You will need to get over the anti vaxx tendency and accept reality.
“greatest ever clinical trial”
”accept reality”
I think you need to lay off the cheap lager and stop watching the BBC.
Have you read the Pfizer trial data yet?
Clearly you haven’t.
Reported that the US Navy have now stopped punishing the vax free among their ranks. It’s going in the right way, however not fast enough
Forced? Really.
You didn’t hear about Austria then?
Fines or imprisonment without a vaccine, well that is until they dropped the whole facade, I assume they didn’t want to be associated with their second most famous national.
No idiot, not Arnold, the one with the funny moustache, and the Hugo boss outfit.
Doesn’t mean very much when you can change the definition at a moment’s notice. Fauci and his ilk are dead men walking and I thnik they feel this in their bones. Like the ancient Chinaman said, sit by the river long enough and you will see the heads of your enemies come floating by.
I don’t care if they all change their minds on it. They can back peddle all they like. I hope everyone doesn’t forget what these evil people did to us all!
And how much money they stole. Most people don’t want acknowledgements, they don’t want apologies, sackings even are too sparing. There needs to be financial armageddon for those who wrecked economies.
It is not minds that have changed. It is the phase of the pandemic, which is due to immunity and lower death rates.
Which is due to vaccination.
So let’s say thank you to the vaccines.
Surprising then that all cause mortality has gone up not down. The vaccines are so good that the more shots you have the better chance you get of being infected or reinfected. That is patently obvious. What is more insidious is the myth that they prevent you getting seriously ill. There is no evidence to that, and it’s unlikely there ever will be. Let’s say thank you to the vaccines that were patented a day after the virus was, in 2017. Yeah good idea.
There is no mention of the slow march into neurological tissue and destruction of the brain. Of course nobody wants to look at that. This disease contains many sinister realities, I have seen them in the deterioration of older members of my own family. There is no putting humpty dumpty back together again just like there is no going back to our cognitive level of ten years ago. And pricks like this one are entirely responsible.
I too have seen what you describe – in elderly relatives, for which I will never forgive what has been done to them and the people who have played their part in it, but also in younger vaccinated too. I think it was at worst deliberate and intentional, and at best, possibly accidental or a known risk that TPTB were happy to take.
What’s Fauci up to?
Something new will be appearing shortly that’s an absolute cert.
He is an object lesson in shamelessness.
..like all the ‘objects’ over here….the Cabinet, SAGE, MHRA, Ferguson and modellers of the same ilk. Never will they know lives reduced, in straitened circumstances, as they were all/ are seduced by money and power and flattered ego.
That’s exactly it – the “lives reduced”; for billions by now. They have no idea and no capacity to care.
Who is protecting him?
Perhaps it’s what he knows as well as who he knows?
Get a grip.
Get a grip
This corrupt and criminal’s latest sidestep is well-described and taunted in elgatomalo’s latest post. I wonder when his fellow recidivists, liars, Big Pharma placemen and others in the UK start singing from the Fauci hymnsheet.
Perhaps “Cloudy Crystal Balls” Ferguson could produce, for once, an accurate Recantation Model?
The differential has already occurred. The fact that a vaxxed person who might exert themself physically will possibly induce a heart attack, as if physical exertion sets up a system of knives and daggers within the vascular system. The fittest and the best are those who will be struck down first. There is already evidence for this. These people will have fewer and fewer defenders as time goes by.
You are being silly. You have taken your miniscule knowledge level and applied poor reasoning skills to come up with nonsense.
Then you found 23 similar idiots to like your post.
PLANdemic phase of covid19 is over. Moving on to the next new phase
the scientific basis for making this announcement is that the data shows even erstwhile mask wearing Democrats have started ignoring him.
They’ll be launching the next bioweapon soon then. Can’t deprive Billy boy of Clot Shots version 2, eh?
Some people in other countries were quite impressed and inspired by the resistance in this country. You shouldn’t forget that. The reistance we mount counts for a lot. Our enemies can’t possibly win our job is to limit the damage. You might think that your contribution is ineffectual but it really does keep the bastards in check.
Kamala Harris seems to have failed to become a dead end for SARS2
https://boriquagato.substack.com/p/yes-the-vaccines-were-supposed-to
Emphasis on the “Dead” of course.
Isn’t that a daisy? The nonexistent pandemic is ‘over’. Would you Adam and Eve it? Don’t hold your George, the next nonexistent scare cannot be far off.
In other noos, your writer’s nearest ‘CofE’ church has stopped flying the Ukrainian flag and is once again flying the English flag. You know, the flag of the land it is alleged to represent. I suppose, unlike the regime, she wasn’t in it for the long haul. But you’ll nonetheless forgive the deviation of the church, she has long since deviated from her traditional/theological roots.
More at Ten.
Ever considered the evidence behind religion, since you care what a church does.
Go on be sceptical.
No, Gumbo, I’ve never considered such things.
Yes, as a Christian I am instructed to test everything and hold fast to what is good and to abstain from all evil. (1 Thessalonians 5:21-22 ESV)
Now, twiggy, what is ‘good’ and what is ‘evil’?
Now Elon is in charge of Twitter, there’s no chance of covering-up publicly exposed emails so no doubt Dr Faucinstein is teaching himself how to use Tor and is, through an encrypted tunnel, commissioning Gain of Function part II as we speak.
I’m not on the Musk bandwagon. I don’t think he’s going to be the saviour of freedom of expression that everyone on the right and moderate left believes. I can’t quite articulate why I’m sceptical, but it has something to do with Musk himself/his own world view combined with the lunatic establishment making life difficult for him.
I hope I’m wrong.
I share your scepticism.
You don’t mean scepticism. You should look up what it means.
I don’t see searching questions on this site. Just stupid rants.
Fuck off and post elsewhere then?
It’s going to be much easier to blackmail one Mr. Musk than everyone on board of a public company. In fact, Mr. Musk should be very concerned about his personal safety now – unless of course he is already a puppet duly playing his role.
Anyone who has a girlfriend called ‘Grimes’ is not normal.
I agree. People are in for a surprise if they hold Elon Musk up as a saviour of free speech and bastion of capitalism. He is neither.
ONS: there were 46,202 deaths registered in England in March 2022. This was 640 more deaths than in March 2021 and 1,141 more deaths (2.5%) than the five-year average (2016 to 2019, and 2021). It doesn’t sound like a pandemic.
How about 2020 and 2021?
You may have noticed the death rate fell significant after the vaccination campaign.
I know it is an inconvenient fact, but you need to accept reality.
I don’t know where you get your “facts” from but –
https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2021/06/global-covid-deaths-2021-have-topped-all-last-years
“COVID-19 deaths in 2021 worldwide have surpassed the total number of COVID-19 deaths in all of 2020, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of Johns Hopkins data yesterday. As of Jun 10, 1,884,146 people have died of COVID-19 in 2021, compared with the 1,880,510 in 2020.”
Now explain why countries with a low or no vaccine programme are also seeing death rates fall this year.
Natural immunity by any chance?
Pfizer knew about that in their own trials –
https://phmpt.org/
Keep back peddling you Fraud.
It seems like almost on a daily basis now, our suspicions and “theories” are being proven correct.
Add this to the recent court case in the UK, where the decision to deport the elderly back to care homes was found unlawful.
Their whole system of lies is crumbling, one rotten piece at a time.
There is a rumbling amongst the masses, they still don’t understand the gravity of the situation, the deceptive media are still trying to steer the conversation away from the truth.
But people are at least now starting to get uneasy with the narrative.
The penny might just drop for some of them.
Expected next panic.
There will be a close fly-by of a comet in 2026. Some time ago calculations suggested that it might hit, but more recent ones suggest a close passage.
I suspect that we will be being treated to an ‘Outer Space Panic’ before too long…
My money’s on hoaxed alien landing.
Is the crook Fauci not in prison yet then?
What is his crime?
Specifically.
You mean apart from lying to Congress and funding research that was banned under US regulations?
Do I need to mention his involvement in the HIV scandal, or is that enough?
How is this egregious fraud still in place?
The world has gone mad, with the US in the van.
They will go to any lengths to keep this schtum. I even read an article recently which claimed that the civil service was adopting a lazy manana attitude as part of some new cultural drive. Believe me if a new manana attitude is starting to prevail it is because of the physical and spiritual weakening of the particpiants, We are talking about a great diminution of our energies and we shouldn’t just brush this aside. But people will, the line of least resistance is always the most attractive,
The public sector has always had a manana attitude, it matters not whether they sit at a desk in an office or in their pyjamas at home. The fact is they are unaccountable and hence the motivation to succeed and deliver value is absent.
The sight and/or sound of Fauci makes my skin crawl. I really hope that he dies a slow, agonising death. The evil little cnut.
Read your own post and wonder who is a nasty piece of work.
Fauci is up there with Ferguson – wouldn’t trust them one inch.
I’m sure neither seeks the approval of the residents of this institution.
Somefink gotta be dun abaht them Fauscists.
Get an education
Hang on a minute!
The most significant global event in mankind’s history and it took a journalist to ask a question which dragged out a casual admission from, perhaps, the principle actor in this whole event, that the pandemic is over?
No global, or even national announcement in the USA, that we are all out of the woods and covid is now merely endemic?
Nothing splurged across the broadsheets and red tops, no grand announcements on radio or TV? No celebrations in parliaments across the world?
Nothing to demonstrate to the Chinese, torturing their population once again, that the west has had enough and we are damn well getting back to normal.
No! Just Fauci treating the public with his usual contempt and doing a Joe Biden whisper into the mic. that will slowly dribble around the western world.
It seems, by his attitude, that we stupid public should all have known this already.
Stop Press: Vice-President Kamala Harris has tested positive for Covid in spite of being quadruple jabbed.
It’s OK because vaccinated people are a ‘dead end for coronavirus’; she can freely mix with others knowing that it’s impossible for her to pass it on. Thus spake Fauci before it was universally recognised that the vaccines were less than useless.
I think it’s fair to assume that the Vice Courtesan in Chief has been jabbed far more than four times.
Fekin brave men!
What I find absolutely sickening about this statement from Fauci and the legal judgement about care home admissions is the almost zero acknowledgement from the average citizen and the media of their parts in this. For over two years they ran the psyop and were willing participants in the mindless evil that took place and in places still is.
Over 50% of the population should feel ashamed of itself, but it doesn’t its too busy cheering on some country that a few months ago could have been outer mongolia.
I am ashamed to be human quite often these days.
The best I get from these cretins is “it’s time we moved on”
https://boriquagato.substack.com/p/as-vaccine-failure-becomes-more-and
What we are about to see is another full frontal attack on the critical thinkers. They have only one out, to press down with their boot.
So Fauci says the pandemic is over.
Surely the obvious question, even for a mainstream journalist is: given that the current lower level of cases and deaths is not much different to patterns seen in both 2020 and 2021, why was it a pandemic then and not now?
Except the pattern of deaths is vastly different now wet 20 and 21.
Writing something doesn’t make it true. So stop talking nonsense.
I know – glaring isn’t it?
Which means that the fact that they don’t ask it gives the lie to their role over the last 2 years – nothing more than govt propagandists
Therefore the Emergency Use Authorisation for the novel gene therapies is now defunct?
Stop publishing ‘bad taste’ picture of the Devil and reporting his drivelings!
There never was a pandemic. Just seasonal ‘flu and now a cold.
This man is a demented liar.