Nigerian historians and government officials tried very hard to stop the auction of several stolen artefacts from the country, especially some of those artefacts featured in auction house Christie’s collection “Arts of Africa, Oceania and North America” scheduled to go under the hammer in Paris, with the most valuable expected to rise to $1 million.
Concerned stakeholders believed the collection includes artworks that were looted during Nigeria’s civil war, as well as other pieces that were taken earlier under British colonial rule.
Christie’s deny that any items in the sale were acquired illegitimately.
But Monday 29th June 2020, the artefacts auction in Paris went ahead. The pair of “museum quality” Igbo statues were sold for 212,500 euros ($239,000). Meanwhile, a “major Urhobo statue” estimated at 900,000 euros ($1m) failed to sell.
The three pieces from southern Nigeria were among several “African masterpieces” that Christie’s said came from an “important European private collection” they declined to name.
However, the head of the National Museum in Nigeria’s Benin City had said the objects were stolen during the Biafran war that raged in the late 1960s and appealed to Christie’s “and other auction houses to halt the process immediately”.
According to Theophilus Umogbai, “they have to repatriate such works and pay compensation to us in the interest of natural justice.”
In the same vein, Chika Okeke-Agulu, a Princeton scholar, believes the stolen objects were “an important part of Nigeria’s art and cultural heritage”.
“Nations and societies value the examples of the great art and cultures of their ancestors,” he told Al Jazeera.
“So to have this set of objects that were stolen from eastern Nigeria during the civil war between 1967-70, up for sale when we should be discussing the terms of their return because they were illegally taken out of Nigeria, that’s why I started the call for repatriation,” said Chika Okeke-Agulu.
