Cameroonian restitution activist, Sylvie Vernyuy Njobati: “It makes no sense for the state to go and have negotiations with another in the absence of the stakeholders, which are the museums and the community”.
Njobati had made a promise to her grandfather that she would see to it that their queen mother returned to her land.
“I have come a whole long way. When I entered into these conversations in 2021, there was this general reluctance even to engage with communities on restitution. They (the authorities) just weren’t willing to do so,” she recalls.
“We revere our ancestors. The statue is seen as a connection between the living and our ancestors, and we also use it to invoke fertility of the soil, among other rituals,” the Cameroonian restitution activist, Sylvie Vernyuy Njobati, tells TRT Afrika.
The statue at the heart of the restitution campaign is one among thousands of African artefacts looted from the continent during colonial rule.
