Dispute over permanent home for repatriated artefacts as calls made for them to be housed in royal palace rather than museums
The Benin Bronzes belong to our king and no one else, Benin chiefs have said, in a growing row over who will care for artefacts repatriated from Britain.
The universities of Oxford and Cambridge have pledged to return hundreds of Benin Bronzes, a collective term for artworks looted in 1897 from the Kingdom of Benin – now part of Nigeria – but questions over their eventual ownership are stoking local tensions.
The most senior chiefs of the Benin people have warned that their king or “Oba” is the only acceptable owner of the artworks, despite competing plans for their future once they are returned to Nigeria.
The dispute over a permanent home for the artefacts has prompted concerns that British repatriation of the Benin Bronzes will become a “fiasco” in which there is “no certainty that they will be kept safe or accessible”.