Switzerland returns 18 Benin Bronzes to Nigeria at Lagos ceremony

The handover on Monday 29 June 2026 adds 18 objects to a national collection that still has no settled home [2][3][4][5]. A dispute between the Oba of Benin and the Museum of West African Art means none of the returned bronzes are on public display there [2][3]. For Nigerian museums, the immediate change is a larger holding with no clear exhibition plan. The open question is where these objects will finally be shown.

The Lagos handover

The ceremony at the National Museum in Lagos also brought the signing of an international agreement between Switzerland and Nigeria on the import, export and repatriation of cultural property [1]. All 18 objects are Benin Bronzes [1]. Alongside them, Switzerland handed over a bronze bracelet and four Ikom monoliths from the Niger Delta [3][4]. Its federal department of home affairs said the items were seized in Swiss criminal proceedings and then transferred to the state [1][3]. Hannatu Musa Musawa, Nigeria's culture minister, called the return evidence of a civilisation that mastered bronze casting before colonisation [3][4][5]. She said the work reached a standard of technical, artistic and extremely intricate sophistication [3][4][5]. Switzerland's move, she said, should be emulated by every single nation holding African heritage [3][4].

British forces attacked Benin City in 1897 [3]. The 18 pieces are a fraction of the estimated 5,000 objects taken then, and they were scattered across museums and private collections in Europe and North America [7][3]. More than 150 original bronzes had come back over the previous five years [2]. The Guardian reported that figure in November 2025 [2].

What came back and who sent it

Fourteen of the 18 objects came from the Ethnographic Museum at the University of Zurich, while the Museum Rietberg and the Musée d'Ethnographie de Genève returned two each [1]. The handover follows the Benin Initiative Switzerland, launched in 2021 and led by the Museum Rietberg with funding from the Swiss Federal Office of Culture [1]. Eight Swiss museums take part [1]. The initiative says its aim is to investigate the provenance of every Benin object in their holdings with full transparency [1]. Among the returned items was a container for herbs and medicine showing Ofoe, the divine messenger of death, as a three-limbed figure with no torso [1]. An Ẹroro bell also came back; such bells were worn by Benin warriors as a sign of rank [1].

Alice Hertzog, director of the Ethnographic Museum at the University of Zurich, said the bronzes never should have been in Switzerland in the first place [3][4][5]. "They were never ours to keep," Hertzog said [3][4][5]. Elisabeth Baume-Schneider, a Swiss federal councillor, told the ceremony the artefacts carry a painful history [3][4][5]. Many left the Kingdom of Benin, she said, as a result of violence, looting and deeply unequal power relations [3][4][5].

The wider restitution ledger

Germany is the benchmark [1]. It signed a declaration with Nigeria in 2022 promising to return all 1,130 Benin Bronzes held in German museums [1]. Its foreign ministry put the country's holdings at around 1,100 of the estimated 5,000 objects taken [7]. In December 2022 it handed 22 artefacts to Nigeria at a ceremony in Abuja [7]. Then foreign minister Annalena Baerbock said officials from her country once bought the bronzes knowing they had been robbed and stolen [7]. "It was wrong to take them and it was wrong to keep them," she said [7]. The Netherlands returned 119 Benin Bronzes last year [1]. Cambridge returned 116 artefacts earlier this year [1][6]. Its Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology transferred legal ownership of more than 100 works to Nigeria's National Commission for Museums and Monuments in February [6].

The British Museum holds around 900 objects, the largest single collection [7]. An act of parliament prevents it from returning them [7]. That legal barrier, not a shortage of requests, explains why the largest holding has not moved. Nigeria's National Commission for Museums and Monuments has issued formal repatriation requests to museums around the world [7]. Most of Africa's cultural heritage remains outside the continent: an estimated 90 to 95% of it, according to Anadolu [6].

Where the bronzes will go

The Museum of West African Art (Mowaa) in Benin City was supposed to host several of the bronzes [2][3]. It has not worked out that way. A rivalry between Edo state's former and current governors, who belong to different political parties, means none of the bronzes will be on public display there [2]. In November 2025 protesters disrupted a preview event at Mowaa [2]. They argued the opening violated Benin City's cultural heritage, which they said falls under the authority of the Oba of Benin, Ewuare II [2]. Phillip Ihenacho, Mowaa's director, told Agence France-Presse that protesters entered and began vandalising part of the reception pavilion before storming the exhibition area [2].

In March 2023 Nigeria's federal government sided with Ewuare II [2]. He has argued the artefacts should be housed at the Benin palace because they were looted from there [2]. Restitution has therefore run into homegrown roadblocks, with Nigerian authorities and Benin's traditional rulers at times at loggerheads over who should hold the bronzes [3][4][5].

The dispute is unresolved. For now the 18 objects join a national collection whose display arrangements remain contested [2][3].