Sculptures
France has returned to Nigeria five ancient terracotta sculptures smuggled out of the country in 2010.
The artefacts, of Nok origin, were found in the luggage of French citizen at a Paris airport.
Their exact value has not been disclosed, but they are believed to date
back more than 3,000 years. Nigeria’s tourism minister told the BBC it
was a “big achievement” in the country’s campaign to recover its lost
treasures from around the world.= “I feel extremely delighted,” said
Edem Duke, who attended the ceremony to receive the sculptures from
French embassy officials in the capital, Abuja.
Over the last 85 years, Nok art has been discovered in a large area of
north-central Nigeria from Jos to Kaduna. Experts say Nok art, which
often represents human heads, is the earliest attempt at portraiture yet
discovered in Nigeria. Nigeria’s National Commission for Museums and
Monuments believes that items of Nok culture show it was the first
society to have used iron in sub-Saharan Africa.
Smuggling routes
The BBC’s Chris Ewokor, who attended the ceremony in Abuja, says the
terracotta sculptures are believed to have been smuggled out of Nigeria
to neighbouring Togo, from where the French buyer flew to Paris’s
Charles de Gaulle airport.
It is a route thought to be used by smugglers to avoid customs checks at Nigerian airports, he says.
France’s ambassador to Nigeria, Jacques Champagne de Labriolle, told
the BBC the artefacts’ return was part of a global attempt to fight the
“illegal trafficking of cultural goods”.
“It is both a decision by the French government and an obligation by
all those countries that have signed the Unesco convention on the
matter,” he said.= The return of the Nok sculptures would help in
Nigeria’s fight to recover its lost heritage, Mr Duke said.
“It’s a very symbolic achievement and it also sends a very important
signal to the rest of the world that we will continue to pursue the
repatriation of our heritage assets and treasures wherever they are,” he
told the BBC’s Focus on Africa programme.
Nigeria has long campaigned for the return of artefacts stolen when the
British took over the kingdom of Benin, now southern Nigeria, in 1897.=
Its latest call has been for Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts to return 32
Benin artefacts which were
donated by a collector to the gallery last.
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