An American NGO has demanded that British universities are refused permission to return artefacts taken from African states that “profited from slavery”.
Nigeria must not be handed back historical artefacts taken from the region by the British due to the fact that the country’s modern population have “profited from slavery”.
The Benin Bronzes, a number of which are housed in the universities of Oxford and Cambridge, were originally created in the Kingdom of Benin, whose rulers greatly benefited from the African slave trade.
Both universities are now aiming to return the artefacts to Nigeria, though the transfer has to be signed off by government officials first.
According to a report by The Telegraph, American NGO the Restitution Study Group has demanded such permission be refused, claiming that those who benefitted from Benin’s slave trade are the modern inhabitants of the nation-state Nigeria, which currently controls much of the Kingdom of Benin’s former territories.
“The Kingdom of Benin, through Nigeria, would be unjustly enriched by repatriation of these relics,” a letter to British authorities by the NGO read.
“Black people do not support slave trader heirs just because they are black,” the letter continued. “Nigeria and the Kingdom of Benin have never apologised for enslaving our ancestors.”
Deadria Farmer-Paellmann, the lawyer at the head of the group, has instead demanded that the bronzes be kept in the West where those enslaved by Benin now currently reside.
“We want France, UK, USA and other museums to know they should keep the Benin Bronzes for the real victims, the descendants of the enslaved who paid for them with their lives, not the slave traders’ descendants,” the NGO’s head is reported as saying.
While the American NGO seems adamant that artefacts should not be handed back to the descendents of slave traders, Britishj universities have already begun doing so, handing back one ornate bronze statue of a cockerel to a Nigerian delegation late last year.
The cockerel had previously been displayed in a dining hall in the university, but had been removed in the wake of the Black Lives Matter disorder of 2020, with the return of the ornament, along with many other artefacts from all over the West, delighting the traditional aristocracy in Nigeria.
“Across the international museum sector, there is growing recognition that illegitimately acquired artefacts should be returned to their countries of origin,” asserted one Cambridge official on the possible return of the artefacts, while another claimed that the return of the cockerel statue was the “right thing to do”.
The university has also pushed for investigations into its own links to the slave trade, showing relatively little interest in considering the Kingdom of Benin’s slavery legacy.
Meanwhile, despite the British university sector giving great focus to the historic injustices suffered by minority groups, reports have emerged that young white men from working-class backgrounds are actually the most disadvantaged group within Britain’s education system, being the least likely to have their applications accepted to attend one of the country’s top-level institutions or to get into university at all.
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