The vision for a modern state museum in Benin City that meets all the requirements as a new home for the 1,130 Benin bronzes that Germany transferred to Nigeria is for now a thing of the past. The incumbent Nigerian President, Muhammadu Buhari, announced in a public statement on March 23rd that he had transferred ownership of all Benin artefacts looted from the Royal Palace in 1897 and collected elsewhere in the Benin Empire to the Oba of Benin. He recognises him as the owner and has therefore transferred all associated rights, including storage and administration, to him by means of a presidential decree: “To the exclusion of any other person or institution,” as the Nigerian newspaper This Day quotes the decree.
This applies to all the Benin objects that have already been returned and all the others expected to be returned worldwide; in future, they will have to be handed over directly to the Oba as the original owner. All the artefacts are to be housed at the king’s palace or another location in Benin City or elsewhere, according to the Oba’s discretion, as long as their safety is assured. The Federal Government of Nigeria and the Oba are jointly responsible for the security and protection of the objects. As far as the management of the collections is concerned, this is entirely in the hands of the Oba. He can, at his own discretion, cooperate with national or international institutions regarding the preservation of the objects. There is no longer any talk of travelling exhibitions, loans, public access, scientific international cooperation and exchange.
Denial of history
With this decree, Nigeria’s President, shortly before the end of his term of office – the swearing-in ceremony for the new President, Bola Tinubu, will take place this month – created what at first glance seemed surprising. The current President is transferring Nigeria’s national property – including what had been the national property of Germany until the summer of 2022 – to a private individual or a private, autocratic institution. A public good has thus become private property. The Oba has already officially informed the Dutch ambassador in Nigeria that the Netherlands must also comply with the this ‘law’ (“that is the law”).
What was intended by German politicians as a return of important cultural artefacts to the “Nigerian people” to “heal the wounds of the past” is now instead a gift to a single royal house – one among many royal houses and Sultanates in the Republic of Nigeria. A royal family that, from today’s perspective, also committed horrendous war crimes and crimes against humanity until it was subjugated by the British: notorious wars of aggression over centuries with looting, destruction, massacres, the enslavement of prisoners of war, human sacrifices, and slave trading on a large scale.
The actual Benin bronzes are known to be the direct result of the slave trade because the Europeans paid for the slaves with brass rings that became the raw material for the bronzes. They are now returning to the place where they were created, transformed into valuable works of art and historically ‘cleansed’. As can be seen in publications from around the royal court, on the Internet and even in the Digital Benin database connected to the Rothenbaum Museum in Hamburg, the history of the Kingdom of Benin now consists of a paean to the embellished past in which the bloody excesses are concealed and denied. This is an affront to the descendants of slaves in the United States and the Caribbean.
The return of the bronzes to the “Nigerian people” has ended in a fiasco for German politicians and the museum employees who did their bidding. How careless the wording of the agreement on the transfer of ownership between Germany and Nigeria can now be seen very clearly.
German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said at the state ceremony in Abuja last December, as she performed the symbolic handover of the Benin artefacts: “We are therefore pleased to fund the construction of an art pavilion at the Edo State Museum and to invite you to exhibit the bronzes there. In addition, we have agreed that some bronzes will go to global travelling exhibitions and some of them will remain on loan in German museums.”
By the “Edo State Museum” she obviously meant the planned Edo Museum of West African Art (EMOWAA), a private initiative of the Legacy Restoration Trust that goes back to the governor of the state of Edo, Godwin Obaseki. The Benin Dialogue Group, the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation and the Federal Foreign Office have been supporting the construction of this architecturally impressive project for years – although a long-term financing plan for the museum’s operations was never presented – and funded it with four million euros.
The wrong museum
The museum is now under construction. However, some significant changes have been announced on the EMOWAA homepage since the beginning of March. It previously stated that the museum would be “home to the world’s most comprehensive collection of Benin Bronzes”. That sentence is no longer there. The EMOWAA will no longer be what German politicians imagined.
There were other indications that things were not going to plan. In the minutes of the last meeting of the Benin Dialogue Group in Hamburg in March of this year, the EMOWAA was no longer mentioned at all, but the Benin Royal Museum, i.e., the Oba’s private museum, was referred to explicitly. Just a few weeks earlier, the overall political situation looked different: the responsible ministers of both countries were at the official ceremony of the German handover. The royal court was not represented – it obviously hadn’t been invited. So what changed?
The family conflict
Everyone who was interested knew that things had been brewing behind the scenes in Nigeria for a long time and that the expected repatriation of thousands of Benin bronzes had become a bone of political contention. Nigerian newspapers have long been reporting on a “cold war” between the Governor, Godwin Obaseki, and the Oba, Ewuare II. The royal court and right-wing groups supporting it starting making threats and did not rule out physical violence if the Benin bronzes went to EMOWAA instead of the king. However, Obaseki had ambitious plans for the new museum. As governor of the federal state of Edo, he wanted to develop the capital, Benin City, into a cultural centre of West African art. The Benin bronzes would have played a central part in this.
Ironically, the conflict dates back to 1897, when the British conquered the royal city of Benin and deposed the king, as This Day and other newspapers reported in 2019. Agho Obaseki, the grandfather of the current Governor, was given the title of honorary chief by the Oba. The Oba gave Obaseki his daughter in marriage and gifted him 100 slaves. When the Oba was already in exile, according to Nigerian newspaper reports, Obaseki took over the office of Oba from 1897 to 1914 and after the death of the exiled king his eldest son was installed as Oba. The British interfered by appointing Obaseki the new Oba’s chief adviser. This resulted in a power struggle, because Obaseki was considered a collaborator with the British and a traitor to the king. Godwin Obaseki, the current governor, is now accused by royalists of perpetuating this treason. A newspaper headline related to the governor’s EMOWAA initiative read: “Does Obaseki want to be like his grandfather?”
According to the Nigerian media, President Muhammadu Buhari’s decision to hand over all Benin properties to the Oba puts an end to the fight between the two opponents. The decision was also apparently made over the heads of the Nigerian Museums and Monuments Commission (NCMM) and its Director General, Abba Isa Tijani. Why Buhari did not stipulate that all Benin collections should be housed in purely state museums (such as the national museums in Lagos, Benin City and Abuja) is a mystery. Whether the transfer of ownership is legal and what domestic and foreign policy consequences it will have will only become clear once the new Nigerian President has been sworn in.
Museums as state gift repositories
Presidential access to national treasures is nothing new in Nigeria. Just one year after independence, the then Prime Minister A.T. Balewa went to the National Museum in Lagos to select a state gift for the American President John F. Kennedy. Despite protests from the Director in charge, Balewa chose a richly carved 18th-century elephant’s tusk. Such ivory carvings were placed on the bronze memorial heads on the royal altars of Benin. Balewa delivered the tooth on the occasion of his state visit to the United States in 1961. It is now in the JFK Presidential Library and Museum in Boston.
It didn’t stop there. A few years later, in 1973, General Yakubu Gowon, then President, contacted Ekpo Eyo, Director of the Nigerian Department of Antiquities (the forerunner of the NCMM), and announced his visit to the National Museum. He would choose a gift for Queen Elizabeth to bring to her on a state visit. As Barnaby Phillips, author of the book Loot: Britain and the Benin Bronzes, writes, Eyo cleared the most valuable pieces from the exhibition before the General arrived. But he could not prevent the latter from selecting a 17th-century bronze memorial head and presenting it to the Queen in 1973 in gratitude for British support in the Biafra War.
In England, the head, long thought to be a copy, stood on a shelf in the Royal Library at Windsor Castle. Only in 2002, on the occasion of an exhibition of state gifts to the Queen in Buckingham Palace, did experts identify it as an original which came from the collection of the National Museum in Lagos. Today, it is in the Grand Vestibule of Windsor Castle. The history of the memorial head is embarrassing: it came from an altar of the Oba and was captured by the British in 1897. Most likely an officer of the punitive expedition took it to England, where it eventually ended up on the art market. British colonial officials in Nigeria acquired the head between 1946 and 1957 for the National Museum in Lagos, where it remained until 1973. The British royal family received notification in December 2022 that Nigeria would not reclaim the state gift.
The odyssey of the Benin bronzes from Germany and other countries continues.
Brigitta Hauser-Schäublin was a professor of ethnology at the Georg-August University in Göttingen from 1992 to 2016. This article was first published in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung on May 6th. Translation by Mike Wells.
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“According to the Foundations’ survey, 35% of 18-35 years-olds around the world say that having a leader who “doesn’t bother with parliaments or elections” is a good way of running a country (the highest of any age group).”
But that IS democracy in Western Countries.
And deliberately so, it seems to me.
I would think that nothing pleases the global oligarchy more than an upcoming generation that is all too happy to have them running everything without the hassle of the pretence of democracy.
Good point. That is what PASSES for democracy.
I’m sure just because they believe it’s a good idea at the moment the future will teach them a hard lesson and war or rebellion is the only way to put their mistake right, time will tell, history tends to repeat itself!
“Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And, weak men create hard times.”
I think we’re generally in agreement on our position in the cycle right now.
Although I must say that Dorothy Byrne looks like she’s been enjoying some good times in her local cake shop. Right after she cleaned out the pie shop next door.
Actually, just to continue my conversation with myself, and doing my bit for equal rights, feminism, blah blah blah, I’m thinking you could quite easily refine Hopf’s famous quote thusly:
Hard times create skinny women. Skinny women create good times (I have a long-running disagreement with both Queen and Spinal Tap on this issue.) Good times create fat birds. And fat birds make everyone miserable.
That made me chuckle
I concur
In my experience skinny women are no fun at all – give me a dormouse in preference to a shrew any time.
Thanks for the laugh
LOL
Harsh, but fair.
I’ve got to say that’s the best laugh I had all day. And your “Good times create fat birds…2 version below
That’s an excellent statment
Considering this, the serious hard time Germans went through from 1914 – 1918, soldiers and civilians alike, should have created strong men which ought to have created good times. The creation of the latter whas the third reich, whose good times ought to have created weak men which – in turn – should have created hard times …
This statement is a nonsensical witticism even a cursory look at history easily reveals as such.
My apologies. I shall endeavour to do better tomorrow, Sir.
This O tempora, o mores! howling from the fringe parts of the still pretty much US-dominated internet is usually not particularly sensible, not the least because it’s designed to undermines those it’s also designed to appeal to. The essence of this particular meme is just defeatism — our problems are due to us living in good times and we really deserve to be punished for that!¹ In reality, our problems are a sign of our times very much warranting improvement and we ought to address them instead of whining about their inevitableness.
¹ Another repurposed ‘Christian meme’ …
Yeah I think Shimpling is being mildly ironic in ‘apologising’ to you, RW. (‘Not least because’ – not “not the least because”, by the way)
Oh, really?
I’m not sure that’s the case. The statement merely points out the cyclical nature of stress and consequence. To me the privations of WW1 and the armistice settlement led to the 3rd Reich which by comparison was better that what had gone before. Somehow the strong men became weak and too self assured and failed to leverage the national gain, squandering it on the Eastern Front and a few other mistakes.
But as we know from climate change cyclical phenomena are not simple and obvious and have to be analysed to see the pattern.
Heuristics are notoriously imperfect.
Oh belt up RW! A bit of humour is a great antidote. We hear from you and your questionable grammar constantly; this has started humourously – let it continue that way – for five bloody minutes!
Of course – but I’m sooooo triggered by your patriarchal failure to recognise the part played by women, inherent in that comment.
A result that could trend…
Since there is rarely any real choice between policies, agendas of globalists are taken up by both leftists and rightists, elections are riddled with corruption, polls are fixed (and elections a la US 2020, politicians use state funds to line their own and selected pockets of corporations that fund their election runs, they never accomplish anything, print and spend into inflation, mismanage borders, lecture everyone on globalist norms, climate lies, while jetting around to international conferences while ignoring their nation’s failing services, mandate poisonous injections, demand you get fingerprinted and face scanned when you cross borders…
Yeah it’s getting ripe for Dictators everywhere. But we have totalitarianism now so…
Yep——These young people who imagine they live in a democracy are already being dictated to. Their governments that they think are not making the right decisions are also being dictated to by the globalist treaties they all sign up to. We already live in a dictatorship. Voting just gives the illusion of choice.
“And then one day, for no reason at all, people voted Hitler into power.”
Hitler really only got about a third of the popular vote. It was through backroom dealmaking that he became chancellor.
Excellent article.
This isn’t news.
https://www.britishelectionstudy.com/bes-findings/age-and-voting-behaviour-at-the-2019-general-election/
shows us that the turnout among young potential voters at the 2019 election was around 50%. The other half did not engage with the process of democratically electing their MP.
I think we’re past worrying. We know we’re screwed. It’s not just the young. Lots of people of all ages just snoozing through the destruction of our civilisation.
It’s seems worthwhile to repeat here that the great Brexvote ended 49:51 in favour of leaving, presumably mainly due to Londoners not voting because of bad weather (that’s a guess of mine — I have no real information of that). It follows that about half of the population was taken for a Brex ride very much against their declared will. Does it surprise you that such events, combined with Only Brex is democratic, SUCK IT UP, BUTTERCUP, YOU ARE NOT ENTITLED TO YOUR OPINIONS!!27 rants like the above, even claiming that Johnson’s Brex it harder! government was secretly working against it, has weakened trust in so-called democracy?
It’s perhaps time to pull your head out of your Brex and realize that the other half of the population matters, too.
I voted Remain, though not out of any serious conviction; on the plus side I selfishly liked the idea of being able to move somewhere warmer at some point in the future, on the down side, who wants another layer of parasitical bureaucracy telling you what you can and can’t do, and paying for the privilege, and those cookie warnings on every website… don’t get me started.
The whole Bus thing entirely passed me by.
But still, I picked up on the mood music in the MSM, and the predictions of doom, and I ticked the Remain box.
Perhaps it was because I didn’t really care, but on finding out that Leave had won, I just thought to myself, OK, that’s the decision, let’s get on with it. We had a vote, side A won, now we all get behind it.
But that’s not what happened. It suddenly seemed as if a good proportion of the population were behaving like toddlers having a tantrum. I didn’t like these people, or this attitude. These were not people I wished to be associated with.
I don’t regret voting Remain, but if another referendum were held tomorrow, I’d vote Leave. I feel no animus toward people who arrive at a different decision.
As (at that time) German living in the UK exercising so-called treaty rights, I belonged to the group of objects which were being voted upon. I agree with the toddlers/ trantrum observation except that I’m seeing it on the other side — the winners are still busy telling the undesirable half of the population who dared to disagree with them that they – at best – people who’ve been played for a fool by the evil establishment and at at worse, more likely than not, simply evil traitors and enemies of the ‘real’ people.
Incomprehensible. “the group of objects which were being voted upoon”??? What the hell are you on about? There was a vote. One side lost, the other side won. That’s how democracy is done here. I’ve voted and lost, and voted and won. In your words, Suck it up, buttercup.
There was a vote. It was held by all the right and good people, especially those from Pakistan and Jamaica, and it was about the fate of all the unright and ungood like people. Let’s call them “Poles” to simplify things.
Primitive enough for you?
You don’t need to move anywhere warm, you just need a fat bird to keep you warm.
Been there, done that. After we split up one of my so-called mates admitted that the gang had named the Silentnight hippo and chick after us.
Needless to say, I wasn’t the hippo.
“Against their will”??? When 90% of the media tried to keep them in the EU with endless scaremongering about the dangers of leaving and still failed what more evidence do you require that people wanted to LEAVE? Why should we assume that being part of a political union with 26 other countries is necessary for prosperity and well being and being an Independent country is not? 170 other countries are not in the EU. How are they ever going to manage without being members of the Protection Racket?
Against their declared will. When ignoring the issue of voter turnout, about half of the electorate voted against leaving, hence, this is not an issue of The Evil Establishment™ vs The People™. Despite my official status as income tax cow without any political rights, I sometimes even aspire believe that I belong to the group called people as well.,
EU citizens were able to take advantage of our lax electoral system and vote in the referendum, and I’m sure many of them did. I complained to the Electoral Commission before the referendum – telling them how it was done – and Lord Owen backed up my complaint taking it up directly with them. They weren’t interested.
If only paying tax – as you complain – were a prerequisite for voting. I think that would be fairer.
This was explicitly prohibited. The ‘electorate’ for this ‘vote’ was the people entiteld to vote in so-called general elections, ie, citizens of any Commonwealth country legally in the UK at the time the vote took place, including people with temporary leave to remain. I don’t know if someone bussed in Pakistanis etc for this specific purpose, but doing so had been perfectly legal.
‘aspire to believe…’ Your poor English is exhausting.
Leaving the issue of “not everyone’s a native speaker of English” aside, Schwachkopf, sometimes, a typo is just a typo.
People who harp on about this are like those who want the cup final of 1978 replayed because their team lost. ———I would probably be the same if I could have the 99 Champions league final replayed when my favourite Bayern lost in injury time to Man United. But I have to live in the real world, and accept Bayern lost. —-So did Remainers.
“that’s a guess of mine — I have no real information of that” – You’re expecting to be taken seriously after a comment like that? You’ve herewith forfeited any right to attention from adults. Go back to the Guardian and take you dreadful grammar with you!
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2023/12/no_author/democracy-the-illusion-of-liberty/
Most people have come to realise that our democracies are just fake democracies.
The PMC is in charge, and there is no real difference between it and the CCP anymore: 5000 like-minded people meeting in various locations to sign off on the pre-agreed upon agenda vs. 5000 such people meeting in 1 location to do the same.
https://yuribezmenov.substack.com/p/ns-lyons-china-convergence-interview-banger?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=617396&post_id=139726665&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=97oj4&utm_medium=email
Maybe they are just pseudo populists. They see politicians do their own thing and pander to the UN and WEF rather than to their own voters and think a dictator would not have to do that. But ofcourse they could only hope that their dictator would be a benevolent one. —How likely is that?————- If Democracy is broken then fix the democracy, do not clamour for totalitarians. If Capitalism is broken then fix the capitalism, do not clamour for socialists that want to run your life for you and decide what you need and can and cannot have, based on their collectivist world view.
It comes from an unspoken acknowledgment that the democratic method can no longer bring about any sort of redemptive change. This is what happens you get nihilism, a drawing towards extremes, an emotional life so toxic and devoid of hope that human minds become warped and atrophied and lacking in perspective. Terrible augmentations of everyday reality have occured in the last few years. There is no going back and no real faith in any alternative vision. It’s just grasping the nettle and experiencing the pain to the utmost.
If you spent your adolescent years in the late twentieth century you did well because nothing like that is coming back. When writing about the end of literacy Neil Postman talks about how childhood is essentially built upon a literary tradition and he makes a convincing case. There can be no childhood without literature The loss of interest in reading, perhaps its an attention span thing – this is a serious matter because when the nuance of the word breaks down you have to triumph of spectacle which makes totalitarianism much easier. Just the easygoing and endlessly forgiving tempo of literature reminds us of what it is to be human.
Well with Channel 4 now being one of the Establishment’s chief propaganda wings and a device for injecting raw sewage directly into the brains of the youth, this does not surprise me.
They know what’s been done to them and they know that they have been stunted and they know who they really are. They are having to be way more stoical than we ever were they just don’t voice it. If you really care about them then you can easily unlock their energy.
Not just the young. I’m 72 and it is clear that “democracy” as we used to perceive it has gone. The points noted above are absolutely correct.
My parents’ generation must be spinning in their graves at what has been done to us.
Do not comply. Say NO. And always speak the truth, whatever the cost
I think they are being defiant it is in such a way that they decided years ago to keep their mouths shut. Throughout school these days. I am on the side of the young because when I speak to them I do notice a diffidence and withdrawal but at the same time a depth of application to more important issues.
Don’t worry about anything. Either you provde them with leadership or they find it elsewhere. You might be a bit quiet if your leadership has been a tightly and quietly controlled power grab over the last thirty years. You know who you are and the young know who you are. A time comes when you need to take a grasp of things.
That said, at least the majority still don’t. Or do they? Actions speak louder than words. And as we saw in recent years, at least half the population (of all ages) is happy on their knees.
Terrific article.
Another brilliantly simple piece by McGrogan that says it how it is.
But yet they still seem to be the first to scream that democracy has been subverted or threatened whenever someone that they don’t like is voted into power via a democratic vote…