February 6, 2025
Colloquium

Benin City and a world class museum

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  • January 27, 2025
  • 8 min read
Benin City and a world class museum

By Omo S. Uwaifo

IGUN-ERONMWON Quarters, the bronze and brass casting arts citadel of Benin Kingdom, was established by Ogiso Ere, circa 16 — 66 AD, during the first dynasty of kings of Benin. Towards the end of the 19th century, 1897, Britain attacked, burnt down most homes in the city after plundering them, and took away a variety of artworks, including ivory carvings from Igbesamwan Street, all of which Ędo kings had stored in the Eguae.

After the British loot, the people’s artistry found ways into rich homes and museums across the world. Igun Street produced most of those ingenious artworks, which both surprised and thrilled the world for their artistry that defined the civilization of the artists. Many decades later, the UNESCO World Heritage Convention declared Igun Street a World Cultural Heritage Site sometime late in the 20th century.

Name any great city or university of the Western world, and a Benin artwork will be there. Berlin, Vienna, London, Paris, New York, Washington D.C., Chicago, have their Benin art treasures; so do Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard, Yale universities have Benin great art pieces. Some museums, notably British Museum, Musee du quai Brandy, Paris, Ethnologisches Museum Berlin, The Art Institute of Chicago and The Metropolitan Museum of New York, have art artworks to make you think that they visit Igun Street often to replenish, and add to their collections.

But personally invited to the British Museum once, along with late Dr. Patrick Darling, then a consultant to Benin Moat Foundation of which I was chairman, for a show of Benin plaques, I was disgusted that the British Museum knew so little about the artworks they stole over a century earlier. All of them meant something to the original owners in the Ęguae in Benin City.

Some of the plaques that day told stories of aspects of the Edo-Idah war. If the looters that had dared to putrefy the bedroom of Oba Ovonramwen n’ Ógbaisi proved themselves ignorant of what the artworks were, and they couldn’t learn in over 100 years, why were they holding onto them and even refusing to return them to the Ęguae where some were part of shrines serving spiritual needs of the owners?

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Oba Ovonramwen n’ Ógbaisi

Named or not, several museums overseas have Benin artworks on display, and it is right to ask: why Benin people and Edo State at large, who produced the works as part of their histories, have only “okhogbo,” farm huts, in Benin and elsewhere in Nigeria for their own museums?

That the aesthetics of the artworks continue to please the world should not deny the owners of their history. More than a century after the looters deprived Benin City of its artworks, Benin should live above “okhogbo” to attract tourists to view the artworks through the lens of Benin people who can tell the world the story behind those works. To deny ourselves the opportunity to do so on the brow of Igun Street, Benin City’s World Cultural Heritage Site, is to commit cultural homicide.

My late friend, Surgeon and cultural historian, Dr. Ekhaguosa Aisien identified places in Benin City, which he described as Pilgrimage Centres. If all that you can see if you visit Benin City are those Ceremonial Shrines, then you cannot be said to have seen an eyeful. MOWAA will change that with ancient and contemporary artworks to view from a world class museum. That visit highlighted by a tour of the World Cultural Heritage Site at Igun Street to explore on-going art production methods and demonstrations would be truly amazing.

Similar thoughts against the backdrop of news of possible return of stolen artifacts probably motivated Governor Godwin Obaseki to embark on the idea of a museum. Given a huge basket of priorities, Governor Obaseki needed to hedge public funds; so, he expanded his horizon and named the venture, Museum of West African Art (MOWAA). With Benin City, capital of Edo State and its history looming large in the centre, it was a great branding. And given Benin’s art ingenuity, integrity and renown, MOWAA won a race that had not even begun. What a most deserving host of a world class museum Benin is!

For some time since the 1930s, the Benin Royalty had begun to ask the British to return its stolen artworks. Late Oba Akenzua II did, and got a ceremonial piece back. Come the 21st century, and the Eguae campaigned more vigorously for the return of artifacts, notably through an unintended major work by a teacher of Art History at the University of Lagos and a granddaughter of late Oba Akenzua of Benin, Dr. Peju Layiwola, as she was known then, now a professor. She wrote Benin 1897.com: Art and the Restitution Question. Published in 2010 by Wy Art Editions, P.O.Box 19324 University Post Office, Ibadan, that book bolstered the intervention of the academia and helped the clamorous international campaign that followed, for the return of those works.

By 2017, Edo State had Godwin Nogheghase Òbasęki as governor of the state. A thoughtful Benin person, Òbasęki, like most people from Benin, should have thought about the artifacts and their return to Benin City from where they were stolen. A multifaceted banker, Òbasęki probably thought of a museum that befitted both the artworks and the glorious history of Benin.

Unfortunately, the project experienced bumps along the way. As state governor, Òbasęki was the democratically elected head of a subnation and Benin Kingdom over which the Òba Ęwuare II was and is king, was and is a part of that subnation over which the Governor Òbaseki presided. In a democratic Nigeria, people from many places with natural rulers, face and accept monarchical dictates by volition and they become subjects of monarchical systems that have neither learned to check nor modernize themselves.

Obviously Governor Òbasęki, the democratic head of the subnation, Ędo State and its many natural rulers, but also a subject of his Òba, built MOWAA for the artifacts returned. But the Omo n’ Oba Ewuare II, Governor Òbasęki’s Oba, says the artifacts are his inheritance. Surely, the majority of the artworks the British stole were from the Eguae, and the Omo n’ Oba has every right to his inheritance as great, great, great grandson of Òba Ovonramwęn. Yet for the unique position of MOWAA, it should quickly attract qualitative and historical artworks for its purposes.

If profligate offspring have not sold out the artworks of their forebears, there should be more ancient artworks in Benin Kingdom than those the British stole over a hundred years ago. In that case, MOWAA should expect many more ancient artworks. How very much more when you add ancient artworks from other parts of West Africa?

Clearly, Ędo State only needs to be concerned about actions precipitate or otherwise that could hurt the wellbeing of the people of the state and Nigeria. As we say in Edo, Ogie imuohu guòghò ivie. A ruler never gets angered enough to smash up coral beads. Surely, Benin’s Òba and other respected natural rulers of Ędo State are listening.

The easy part of MOWAA was to get a world class museum architect, a Ghanaian based in the US to design the museum, as well as several institutional facilities, which will teach museum technologies. It will be the first of its kind in Nigeria and probably in West Africa, and Benin City, Edo State, and Nigeria, should be very proud.

Museum itself hardly generates financial benefit. However, its ancillary benefits are huge. It creates tourism which brings immediate and long term financial and health benefits. Tourism makes a people clean up themselves and their environment for better health, and helps them know themselves much better, while earning tourists’ dollars for several services provided them. Hey, Dr. Roland Ehigiamusòe, is your Crest Nature Park, ready?

MOWAA is a trust. In corporate terms, a “trust” refers to a legal arrangement where one party (called the trustee) holds and manages assets on behalf of another party (called the beneficiary), with a fiduciary duty to act solely in the beneficiary’s best interest. Essentially, it’s a structure where ownership of assets is separated from the control of those assets to allow for specific management goals or protection to be implemented. Such arrangement was to be expected of an astute Governor as Godwin Òbasęki.

I read “Setting the record straight on MOWAA and the priorities of the Okpebholo administration,” yesterday and wondered if given the current battle to save his position, he has had time to set any record straight given his plethora of grouses with MOWAA. Let’s be clear. Priorities are not universal. Whoever will sit on the governor’s chair will set the records straight with time and help ensure that Edo’s world class museum in the making, as well as the institutions being built within its complex come to no harm. They will be the pride of Benin City, Edo State, Nigeria, and West Africa. Edo is too sophisticated, cosmopolitan and reputable to toy with the fortune of its people and gifts from the international community.

* Uwaifo is a writer and cultural historian

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