British university to return Benin Bronze to Nigeria 'within weeks'

Neil Curtis, Head of Museums and Special collections is seen with one of the Benin bronze depicting the Oba of Benin at The Sir Duncan Rice Library in Aberdeen

The University of Aberdeen said on Thursday it would return a Benin Bronze to Nigeria within weeks, one of the first public institutions to do so more than a century after Britain looted the sculptures and auctioned them to Western museums and collectors. The university said the sculpture of an Oba, or ruler, of the Kingdom of Benin, had left Nigeria in an ‘extremely immoral’ fashion, leading it to reach out to authorities in 2019 to negotiate its return. Pressure has mounted to return to their places of origin the Benin Bronzes - actually copper alloy relief sculptures - and other artefacts taken by colonial powers. Neil Curtis, Aberdeen's head of museums and special collections, said the Bronze, purchased in 1957, had been ‘blatantly looted.’