“We are constantly in communication with the British Museum, and in one of our meetings, I clearly told them that insinuating you want to loan us our artefacts, I find it quite insulting,” he said. “I’d rather you keep them till the end of time than for you to loan something that was looted.”
Holloway spoke during a panel discussion, alongside Director General of the Centre for Black and African Arts and Civilization (CBAAC) Aisha Adamu Augie, and journalist and author Barnaby Phillips. Ore Ogunbiyi, African correspondent for the Economist, chaired the discussion.
Phillips traced the events leading to the invasion to Britain’s commercial and territorial ambitions in West Africa. At the time, European powers were competing for control of African territories and resources, including palm oil.
Augie argued that the loss extended beyond the objects themselves. The artefacts carry histories, languages and cultural knowledge, and their removal has made them less accessible to successive generations of Nigerians and other Africans.
“Imagine having all your books stolen, and you have no way to access them,” she said.
She called for restitution to address this wider cultural loss, with policies that recognise the relationship between objects, historical memory and traditional storytelling.
