When you find two people from the Benin kingdom talking these days, chances are that they are talking artifacts. That kingdom never ceases to amaze me
At Sotheby’s, the famous British-founded American auction house, the Clyman’s Fang Head, a Gabonese masterpiece, was offered for sale at between $2.5 and $4million last year.
Nigeria is expecting Benin bronzes looted since 1897. Two senior German ministers told a Nigerian delegation on a recent visit to that country led by Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, that the German government planned “a substantial” repatriation of the plundered artifacts. The Nigerian government is demanding, and rightly so, that the return should be “whole” and “unconditional”.
Edo State Governor Godwin Obaseki wants the artifacts back in the custody of the state government and has, in a subversive masterstroke, recruited the Oba’s son to press his case. Around 2004 when Roman Abramovich was lusting after Chelsea Football Club in the UK, his counterpart, Victor Vekselberg, made a stake of $90million on the Faberge Eggs. The storied egg is an intricately woven treasure chest made of precious metals and gems including the Coronation Egg, containing the prototype of the coach which Empress Alexandra rode into Moscow in 1897.
Eight years ago, when The Boston Globe reported that eight artifacts, including a wooden ancestral figure stolen from Oron, Southern Nigeria, were being returned from the Boston Museum, the objects – including the wooden figure – were apparently returned to the Nigerian museums. I’m not sure the “Ahta Oro”, the paramount traditional ruler of Oron, made a case for provenance.
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Benin artifacts and the choice facing Robin Hood, By Azu IshiekweneWhen you find two people from the Benin kingdom talking these days, chances are that they are talking artifacts. That kingdom never ceases to amaze me with the mythical, almost perplexing rootedness of its people to the past, side by side with a modern, avantgarde spirit. Not that bread-and-butter issues have disappeared in Bini talk. […]
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