Switzerland returns 18 looted Benin Bronzes to Nigeria

Nigeria’s stolen cultural heritage is slowly coming back home.

On Monday, Swiss authorities 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.

Monday’s ceremony 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.

Switzerland and Nigeria also signed a cooperation agreement aiming to further the protection of cultural heritage, as part of “a broader effort to address historical injustice.”

Art historians have shown that African states’ and communities’ calls for the return of artefacts looted during the colonial period are as old as the thefts themselves. But effective returns have only started to materialise in recent years, with Nigeria among the countries at the forefront of this struggle.

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.

Other African countries have had wins in that field. Benin received 26 royal treasures from France in 2021, a process depicted in Mati Diop’s award-winning documentary Dahomey. French colonial troops had stolen the pieces during the 1892 colonisation of the Dahomey kingdom.

Earlier this year, French authorities also returned the Djidji Ayôkwé, a sacred talking drum, to Ivory Coast, 110 years after it was seized by colonial authorities.

But the restitution battle remains plagued by reservations and conflicts. Nigeria sent a formal repatriation request to the British Museum in October 2021. The institution retains over 900 objects from the Kingdom of Benin, including 203 Benin Bronzes, but has so far refused to return them under the argument that its collections are legally unalienable.

Ownership disputes can go on even after the repatriation is completed. In November 2025, protesters disrupted the opening of the Museum of West African Art in Nigeria’s Benin City over claims that its handling of repatriated artefacts violated the authority of the city’s traditional rulers. The museum’s launch was postponed sine die.

Some of the artefacts returned by Switzerland on Monday will be on display at the National Museum in Lagos, while most of them will return to their original home in Edo State, where they will be temporarily stored at the National Museum in Benin City.

“The NCMM plans to establish a world-class gallery to display all the recently returned Benin Artefacts, which will include not only the Swiss returns but also the artefacts returned last year from the Netherlands and the expected Cambridge returns,” said the Swiss Federal Department of Home Affairs.