France has returned to Nigeria five
ancient terracotta sculptures smuggled out of the country in 2010.
The artifacts, 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.
The Minister of Tourism Edem Duke
said 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.
The 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.
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, stated the artifacts’ 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 stated.
Nigeria has long campaigned for the
return of artifacts 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 artifacts, which were donated
by a collector to the gallery last year.
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