Cambridge University will on Wednesday become the first British institution to return a Benin Bronze to the Nigerian authorities.<\/p>\n
Jesus College will hand over a statue of a cockerel to a delegation from Nigeria, in a ceremony that will take place at the college.<\/p>\n
It follows decades of campaigning by activists for the bronze statue to be returned home.<\/p>\n
The cockerel is one of thousands of priceless artefacts taken by British soldiers from the palace of the then ruler of the Kingdom of Benin.<\/p>\n
The loot happened during a punitive expedition by the British military in 1897, which resulted in the ancient City of Benin being razed to the ground.<\/p>\n
This marked the end of the Kingdom of Benin, then one of the most powerful in Africa.<\/p>\n
The artefacts were then sold and gifted to individuals, as well as museums around the world.<\/p>\n
On Thursday Aberdeen University will also be returning one of its Bronzes.<\/p>\n
Nigerian authorities and activists have long called for their repatriation, arguing that they are part of their cultural heritage.<\/p>\n
They hope these returns will mark the beginning of a larger scale repatriation of the Bronzes to Nigeria, which plans to build a museum to house them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Cambridge University will on Wednesday become the first British institution to return a Benin Bronze to the Nigerian authorities. Jesus College will hand over a statue of a cockerel to a delegation from Nigeria, in a ceremony that will take place at the college. It follows decades of campaigning by activists for the bronze statue […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1279,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":2,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"source_name":"BBC","source_url":"","via_name":"","via_url":"","override_template":"0","override":[{"template":"1","single_blog_custom":"","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"right-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"top","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_share_counter":"1","show_view_counter":"1","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author":"1","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_category":"1","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","show_prev_next_post":"1","show_popup_post":"1","number_popup_post":"1","show_author_box":"0","show_post_related":"0","show_inline_post_related":"0"}],"override_image_size":"0","image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post":"0","trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post":"0","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","sponsored_post_name":"","sponsored_post_url":"","sponsored_post_logo_enable":"0","sponsored_post_logo":"","sponsored_post_desc":""},"jnews_primary_category":{"id":""},"jnews_social_meta":{"fb_title":"","fb_description":"","fb_image":"","twitter_title":"","twitter_description":"","twitter_image":""},"jnews_override_counter":{"override_view_counter":"0","view_counter_number":"0","override_share_counter":"0","share_counter_number":"0","override_like_counter":"0","like_counter_number":"0","override_dislike_counter":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[34,27],"tags":[52,54,53],"class_list":["post-1278","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-society","category-west-africa","tag-benin-bronze","tag-benin-cockerel","tag-cambridge-university"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1278","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1278"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1278\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1278"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1278"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1278"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}