In our series of letters from African journalists, Nigerian writer Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani looks at how descendants of slaves in the US have entered the tug of war over some of Africa’s most famous artefacts that were stolen during the colonial era and ended up mainly in Western museums.
A group of African Americans has filed a lawsuit to stop the return of some Benin Bronzes from the Smithsonian Museum in Washington DC to Nigeria.
They claim that the bronzes – looted by British colonialists in the 19th Century from the kingdom of Benin in what is now Nigeria – are also part of the heritage of descendants of slaves in America, and that returning them would deny them the opportunity to experience their culture and history.
“It is a very interesting argument,” says 93-year-old David Edebiri, after laughing for about 15 seconds straight.
He is part of the cabinet of the current Oba of Benin – the king or traditional ruler in southern Nigeria’s Edo state.
“But the artefacts are not for the Oba alone. They are for all Benin people, whether you are in Benin or in the diaspora.”
Most Nigerians with whom I have discussed this US lawsuit have burst into laughter.
But Deadria Farmer-Paellmann, the founder and executive director of the Restitution Study Group (RSG) which initiated it, is dead serious.
The kingdom itself did not produce enough metal to supply its casting industry, and relied on imports – including the brass metal from these bracelets, which were melted down to create works of art.
“Fifty manillas would buy a woman, 57 would buy a male slave,” says Ms Farmer-Paellmann.
“What we are saying is that the descendants of the people traded for these manillas have a right to see the bronzes where they live,” she says
“There is no reason why we should be obligated to travel to Nigeria to see them,” she said, citing US travel warnings. “I don’t want to get kidnapped.”
‘Afro-pessimism’
Critics of the case, like Mr Edebiri, argue that not all manillas used in Benin were from the slave trade.
He has written a book about his great-great-grandfather Iyase Ohenmwen, who was prime minister for the Oba in the early 19th Century, detailing how he traded in ivory and European clothes.
“He would take these manillas to Igun-Eronmwon, a village in Benin that manufactured all these artefacts. They would then make them into the bronzes and other fanciful things.”
Acclaimed Nigerian-American artist Victor Ehikhamenor, who is from Edo state, argues that while history is complicated, one matter is simple: “The exact land from where these things were taken has not shifted.”
For Nigerian art historian Chika Okeke-Agulu, a professor at Princeton University and an activist at the forefront of the campaign to return looted artwork, Ms Farmer-Paellmann’s comments “sound like the arguments that white folks who don’t want to return the artefacts have made”.
“The lack of safety strikes me as another version of Afro-pessimism that we’ve heard for a long time,” he says, pointing to the thousands of African Americans who now travel to south-western Nigeria every year for the famous Yoruba Osun Osogbo festival.