30.6.2026
Swiss authorities has returned 18 artefacts looted during the colonial era to Nigeria in a ceremony at the National Museum in Lagos.
The restitution is the result of a collaborative process between Swiss museums and their Nigerian partners under the Benin Initiative Switzerland. The programme was launched in 2021 to investigate the provenance of Benin objects in Swiss collections.
The ceremony on Monday marked the first step in the implementation of an agreement signed in March 2026, in which Switzerland agreed to eventually transfer ownership of 28 pieces to Nigeria.
“The return of our cultural heritage marks more than the recovery of artefacts. It reflects the power of dialogue, trust, and international cooperation,” Nigeria’s culture minister Hannatu Musa Musawa said on X.
Fourteen of the pieces came from the Ethnographic Museum at the University of Zurich, two from the Museum Rietberg Zurich, and two from the Musée d’Ethnographie de Genève.
The 18 artefacts are part of the country’s famous Benin Bronzes, a group of hundreds of sculptures and plaques mostly made of metal and ivory that decorated the royal palace of the Kingdom of Benin, now the Southern Nigerian Edo state. They performed political and religious functions and were essential to the kingdom’s power.
British colonial forces stole most of these objects during a brutal punitive expedition that killed thousands of people in 1897.
After the violent raid, the Kingdom of Benin was absorbed into colonial Nigeria. The stolen pieces were eventually sold to over 130 museums in 20 countries, mostly in the United Kingdom and Germany.
The handover ceremony in Lagos also included the restitution of a bronze bracelet and four archaeological monoliths from Nigeria’s Niger Delta region which were “seized in Switzerland as part of criminal proceedings and subsequently transferred to the state,” the Swiss Federal Department of Home Affairs said in a statement.
Last year, the Netherlands returned 119 Benin Bronzes to Nigeria, the largest physical restitution of such artefacts to the country to date.
In February 2026, the University of Cambridge transferred legal ownership of 116 Benin Bronzes to Nigeria’s National Commission for Museums and Monuments (NCMM), with the physical transfer still to be arranged. Euronews
Benin Bronze