Cultural artifacts play an irreducible role in forging cultural definition and its expressions and also the collective identity of a people. For a full life and a secure identity, people need exposure to their history, much of which is represented or illustrated by objects. A people deprived of its artifacts is culturally impoverished (Merryman 1985, 1912–1913). In a similar vein, the Benin Bronzes help the Edo people to re-establish the mystic bonds between their gods and ancestors and thus sustains their living cultural traditions. The Bronzes provide focal points for the religious beliefs and practices and as such, they have metonymic significance to the people and are a fundamental source of sense of ‘being-in-the-world’ and they are seen as a defining characteristic of their identity.

Thus, the illicit trafficking of cultural artifacts through colonial exploits, illegal excavations, thefts from a museum destroyed by war, are tantamount to the erasure of a people's memory, history and identity. The contentions are also long-lasting and especially for indigenous peoples reflect long struggles against oppression, colonialism and disenfranchisement (Abungu 2019). It is also often a diminishing the experiences of those whose objects are being held and for upholding colonial attitudes in its lack of acknowledging the often dark histories of the museum acquisitions, and the objectification of the museum collection, seeing artifacts as mere ‘art’ instead of the living cultural objects they are to the original cultures (see, e.g. Curtis 2012; Abungu 2008; Knox 2006). Restitution can be one way to alleviate these old wounds and to help in decolonizing museums.

In this spirit, Germany has promised to return its trove of looted artworks known as the Benin Bronzes to Nigeria beginning in 2022. Some five hundred of the more than 90,000 brass, bronze, and ivory objects stolen by British soldiers in 1897 from the Republic of Benin (now Nigeria) are held in the collection of Berlin’s Ethnologisches Museum at the Humboldt Forum, with still more in the possession of more than twenty other museums across the country.