₦airaland Forum

boogie2:
Bro, u no mention the street lights powered by palm oil. Another dutch explorer compared to the the streets in Benin to the streets of Netherlands bit better road network, well paved roads.

ozijay:
This is exactly what I'm trying to say, Africans acting all important for things that wouldn't have been valued if the colonial masters didn't place value on them. You would think Nigerians cared about Artifacts over money or oil, when they don't even value human lives. Just look at our country since the discovery of oil. Our fore father's were actually evil, barbaric, primitive and diabolic and if not for civilization they still would have been locked in the past. Ungrateful people.

goshen26:
I hope we are smart enough to watch those images keenly before bringing them in...

Some tiny chips might be on them

femicyrus:
The world had moved to technology while Nigeria should be given back thier artifacts that was a treasure about 125 years ago

generalwo:
.... What is racist abi what he said?

Swiperite:
If you ask me, I will suggest they keep the artifacts in their museums and send us the revenue generated from visitors.

The items are better cared for over the there.

BRATISLAVA:
Well, you're talking rubbish.

If the British didn't attach value to them and keep them, they wouldn't exist.

The same way you sold people as slaves, they would've ended up in their hands anyway. For all we know, they were sold.

BRATISLAVA:
So much hot air.

Why would I have to know about German and British owned totems, and a history that is yours?

All the other artefacts that the British didn't preserve for you, the ones they left in Nigeria, where are they and why have they been used to make fires for roasting wildlife? If they were kept by Africans, where are they?

BigBashiru:
Im glad this is on first page so as many ppl as possible will read it. One more thing, if they stole the arts, they also stole science and technology.. google "timbuktu manuscript" for confirmation of what africans achieved in science and technology that they tried to erase... just as they erased that of the native americans!

Ifakiland:
Stupid post, your headline says 1000 bronze, den main article says 21....wack blogger

BRATISLAVA:
Things that Nigerians would've thrown into fires and roasted snakes on centuries ago, because colonials made them valuable, they've been acting like they were stolen from them.

Slawomirr:
Damnnn n......r

The ancient city of Benin where the King is truely king

https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/3aaecfb3f6a31560c31888233263e1fb5596c0f1/0_173_5184_3110/master/5184.jpg?width=620&quality=85&dpr=1&s=none
One of the Benin bronzes handed over to Nigeria by Germany in a ceremony on Tuesday.

Twenty-one precious artefacts that were looted by British soldiers from the former west African kingdom of Benin 125 years ago have been handed over by Germany to Nigeria amid laughter, tears, and some audible frustration with the ongoing silence of the country that first stole them.

The objects from the haul of treasures known as the Benin bronzes, including a brass head of an oba (king), a ceremonial ada and a throne depicting a coiled-up python, were taken from the sacked city during a British punitive expedition in 1897 and later sold to German museums in Berlin, Hamburg, Stuttgart and Cologne.

Shortly after lunchtime on Tuesday, Germany’s foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock, passed perhaps the most spectacular of the returned objects into the gloved hands of Nigeria’s culture minister, Lai Mohammed.

https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/95315cb8ec4617a6c5e738fdac9b62a6d2553c66/0_426_6394_3837/master/6394.jpg?width=620&quality=85&dpr=1&s=none
The German foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock, and her Nigerian counterpart, Geoffrey Onyeama, at the handing over ceremony.

“She comes back to where she belongs,” Baerbock said as she handed over a miniature mask of the Iyoba (queen Mother), made of ivory and decorated with yellow glass pearls, red coral and a crown of stylised electric catfish, which was looted from the bedchamber of the last independent oba.

A sample of more than 1,000 Benin bronzes whose ownership Germany legally transferred to Nigeria on 1 July, the artworks were picked up by lorry from the museums, loaded into the cargo hold of a German air force plane at Cologne airport and then flown to Abuja, the capital of Nigeria, via Berlin on Sunday.

On Tuesday, the artworks were unwrapped and put on display on the back of a stage inside the wood-panelled conference hall at Nigeria’s foreign ministry.

https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/b1a5da05cb56649a730bcad741444cc6461a4925/0_346_5184_3110/master/5184.jpg?width=620&quality=85&dpr=1&s=none
One of the returned bronzes.

But as a nation celebrated the return of its long-lost cultural heritage, frustration was expressed with Britain, which holds the single largest collection of Benin bronzes at the British Museum but whose governments have stonewalled restitution debates for more than a century.

“Britain has most of the works, and we thought they would provide leadership”, said Godwin Obaseki, the governor of Edo state, whose modern borders in Nigeria’s south encompass many of the regions that used to belong to the Benin empire. “They were the ones who came here and destroyed the empire, they were the ones who looted pieces from here, and they should be leading in restitution.”

At the handover ceremony, Mohammed said he had hoped Germany’s move would nudge the UK into opening talks about the bronzes held at the British Museum. “But I met a brick wall”, he said. “The British Museum must understand that repatriation is a turn whose time has come.”

https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/e7da5a75e321f6f55d4bda2d918ff8bcb41d6854/0_0_5184_3110/master/5184.jpg?width=620&quality=85&dpr=1&s=none
The Nigerian culture minister, Lai Mohammed (second right) holds up one of the returned objects.


Other individual bronzes have already been returned to their country of origin: London’s Horniman Museum and Gardens last month handed over six objects from its collection to a Nigerian delegation, one of a handful of British institutions to take unilateral steps.

France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, who kickstarted a debate about restituting colonial objects to Africa five years ago, returned 26 objects in November 2021 from France’s Musée du quai Branly to the neighbouring republic of Benin, which is not linked to the former kingdom of Benin.

But these are the first Benin bronzes to be returned as part of a government delegation, peacefully completing a journey from European museums that Marvel’s 2018 Black Panther and blaxploitation movies of the 1980s had imagined would have to come by force.

Political leaders in Edo state expressed hope that Berlin’s move would create political momentum that would force the UK government to end its century-long silence on the subject.

Germany’s announcement in the summer drew critical questions from other European states, especially Britain. But on Monday, German foreign ministry officials said the apology by the Dutch prime minister, Mark Rutte, for the Netherlands’ role in the slave trade added to an impression of a converging EU stance on postcolonial issues.

“This is not the end of a process but the beginning,” said Germany’s culture commissioner, Claudia Roth. “It marks a turning point in international cultural policy.”

For Germany, the arrival of a dynamic young politician in the foreign ministry proved a catalyst for a return movement that had been agreed in principle during the Merkel era but had threatened to lose momentum.

“What would it mean for us to be deprived of our cultural heritage?”, Baerbock said in Abuja on Tuesday. “To not be able to marvel at the Gutenberg Bible in Mainz? To be unable to admire Martin Luther’s writings? To stand in front of a sculpture by Käthe Kollwitz in Berlin or at Goethe’s desk in Weimar? It evokes a sense of loss I can hardly imagine. To you here in Nigeria, however, this loss has been your reality.”

https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/38f16382f281d919b3dca3a1d1e2f4ce4c784ad5/0_0_6720_4032/master/6720.jpg?width=620&quality=85&dpr=1&s=none
Annalena Baerbock, in Abuja

At the end of her speech, the 42-year-old held up a large brass key decorated with leopard figures, which had made its way to Cologne via Britain, Ireland and France at the end of the 19th century. “Today, it’s back here, it’s back where it belongs”, she said.

The Benin bronzes that have returned to Nigeria are meant to be eventually put on display at a new pavilion in Benin City, which Germany is co-financing with €4m.

The pavilion is expected to be opened in 2024 and is supposed to form the apex of a new cultural centre that would support restitution projects in other African countries. Fundraising for a new Edo museum of west-African art, designed by the Ghanaian-British architect David Adjaye, is scheduled to start after the pavilion’s opening.

World class facility to house the returned Benin Bronzes and other Nigerian and West African artefacts.
Under construction in Benin City.
https://static01.nyt.com/images/2020/11/13/arts/13adjaye1/13adjaye1-mediumSquareAt3X.jpg

Kentuforchrist:
So make we clap for them or wat

Is it not their right?

Dreadlock69:
Amala ati ewedu
Amala ati efo riro
Roundabout , shaki

Afang soup with fufu
Edikiong soup with fufu

Proudly my mum cooks all and she's ibo so i enjoy yoruba and different kinds of soup cooked by her chaiii my papa go market well.
Sadly I can’t see a girl that can cook like her

Mrfksb1:
Shithole country


God bless Los Angeles

God bless America

I made the happiest decision of leaving that shithole in 2019

I never regret that decision till today. In LA I've got peace and happiness you can ever have as human here on earth

Africa is hell and it will forever be hell.

Yankiss:
Putin is just forming strong man. He should know that no body outlives death. Hitler with all his arsenal had to commit suicide in an underground bunker. .....

Ckonnet:
The dutch eeh, I count them as the smartest people on earth.

Blue3k:
Since this is just a thought experiment I would suggest every nation add a seccession clause. After that, every aggrieved group can leave if they please. If they choose to join a neighboring country cool if they stagnate and fail I guess they will be militarily and economically dominated by their neighbors. You can be free but with permanent occupation, force to keep peace, and maintain trade like Germany or Japan or DRC.

richeeyo:
African maps needs no redrawing
Its the mindset of Africans that needs redrawing

Wiseandtrue:
This is what I expected from Britain

ItsTutsi:
Only apology accepted is for Netherlands become visa free

thebosstrevor1:
The financial and resources colonization they are doing on Africa, when will they stop

Ọrẹ̀ (re|do)names like Oresanya. They do not derive from Ọ̀rẹ́, (dò|mí), friend, but from Ọrẹ̀, (re|do), a deity. A phrase like “A kìí ọmọ Ọrẹ̀ bọ Ọrẹ̀” (you don’t use the child of Ọrẹ̀ to propitiate Ọrẹ̀) comes to mind.

GardenOfGod:
Nigeria... Always building four square structures... No mind blowing architectural edifice. Nonsense!

AjaanaOka:
I see no regular sound correspondence between both languages that support the sort of sound change you're proposing. For example, are there other examples where a 'z' in Igbo varies as 'h' or 'y' in Yoruba?

Here is a short list of the words for 'tooth' in a number of closely related languages, classified as either NOI (Nupoid-Oko-Idomoid) languages or as YEAI (Yoruboid-Edoid-Akokoid-Igboid) languages:
Yoruba - Eyin/Ehin
Igala (a Yoruboid language) - Enyi
Akokoid - Eyin
Ebira - Anyi
Idoma - Ainu
Edo and Edoid languages - Akon
Nupe - Ika
Gbagyi - Nyikna.
Igbo - Eze

The Igbo word is the ONLY odd word in this cluster. It is, in its form, very distant from all the rest; and is very probably not directly cognate with them. Taking it away, it is possible to propose a hypothesis that the rest of the words descend from a common ancestral word, which probably sounded close to the Gbagyi form, *Nyikna. One can quite easily see how eyin/ehin, anyi and enyi could be formed from the loss of the second syllable in *nyikna; and how ika and akon could develop from the loss of the initial sound of the same ancestral word.

But eze? That word most probably came from a different source. In an old discussion here with ChinenyeN, I suggested that there was a very old relationship between Proto-Igboid and the ancestral language(s) of the Lower Cross Language Family (this family includes Obolo/Andoni and the Ibibioid languages), and that some words in modern Igbo which are not cognate with their counterparts in modern Yoruba, Edoid and Akokoid languages may be early loans from Proto-Lower Cross. One example I gave was the Igbo word for canoe or boat (ugbo), which is not cognate with the word for this item in Yoruba/Edoid/Akokoid, but seemingly cognate with Ibibioid words for the same item (*ubom). Another example is the Igbo word for vulture (udele) which is cognate with Ibibioid words for the same bird, but not with words for it in Yoruboid/Edoid/Akokoid and even Nupoid/Oko/Idomoid, which all have a -gu- root.

Eze seems, to me, to be another Lower Cross loan. The reconstructed proto-Lower Cross word for tooth is *edet, and is more than likely to be cognate with 'eze'. From a preliminary survey of just a few Lower Cross words, it does appear to me that 'd', or 'di' in Lower Cross can vary as/change to 'j' or 'z' in Igbo.

*idiok (bad/ugly in Ibibioid) is probably cognate with ajo/njo in Igbo { di/j sound correspondence}, and
*idiok (chimpanzee in Ibibioid) is probably cognate with ozo dimgba in Igbo

To this one may add:
*edet (tooth in Ibibioid) is probably cognate with eze in Igbo.

(I'll note here that Roger Blench reconstructs tooth in proto-Igboid as eje. A lot of words with z in their modern forms were reconstructed to their ancestral forms by him with a j. This may have been true of the ozo example as well; and a later change of some j's to z's may have occurred.)