Egypt to help Nigeria preserve looted Benin bronzes

The Egyptian government has offered to assist Nigeria in preserving the 1,130 looted Benin bronzes expected from Germany.
The artefacts, with the least weight of 30kg, looted by British troops in 1897, are to be repatriated from Germany to Nigeria this year.
Egypt Minister of Tourism and Antiquities Khaled El-Anany made the offer in Cairo, Egypt, when the Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, visited him.
The meeting was on the sidelines of a bilateral discussion with the Africa Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank) on how Nigeria can access funding to support its growing creative industry.
Mr Mohammed had led some private sector stakeholders involved in Digital Switch Over (DSO) to Afreximbank to assist them in sourcing funds to complete the wholly private sector financially driven project.
The Egyptian minister said they were willing to deploy their wealth of experiences in antiquity preservation management to assist Nigeria in preserving the treasure expected from Germany.
Mr El-Anany disclosed that tourism contributed not less than 30 per cent to Egypt’s GDP, and the Department of Antiquity alone under his ministry employs 32,000 personnel to manage their museums and monuments and archaeological sites.
According to him, Egypt has more than 2,000 tourist sites, and 60 per cent of the tourists visit historical sites, museums and operas.
The minister also offered to help Nigeria in capacity building, .museum management and tourism statistics.
He said Egypt suffered a similar fate, and they had successfully repatriated a lot of their antiquities stolen and transported outside the country’s shores.
The minister urged Mr Mohammed to work with the Nigerian Ambassador to Egypt, Malam Nura Rimi and some key staff members to develop the framework to actualise the offer for assistance.
He extended an invitation to Mr Mohammed to attend the African conference on antiquities and tourism, organised in June in Cairo.
Mr Mohammed, who said he was at the ministry to compare notes, acknowledged that Egypt was one of few countries with the world’s richest and oldest historical and religious sites.
He said Nigeria was willing and ready to learn from the rich experiences of Egypt in tourism development and management.
(NAN)
We have recently deactivated our website's comment provider in favour of other channels of distribution and commentary. We encourage you to join the conversation on our stories via our Facebook, Twitter and other social media pages.
More from Peoples Gazette

Agriculture
FG tasks ECOWAS on leveraging financing strategies for agroecology
The federal government has urged stakeholders in the agriculture and finance sectors in the West Africa region to leverage financing strategies to enhance agroecology practices

Politics
Katsina youths pledge to deliver over 2 million votes to Atiku
“Katsina State is Atiku’s political base because it is his second home.”

Politics
Accord Party, Adeleke’s supporters circulating AI-generated governorship results: APC
The All Progressives Congress in Osun has alleged that members and supporters of the Accord Party are circulating unverified AI-generated election results

States
Adeleke campaign tells APC’s Oyebamiji to concede defeat
“The figures collated from the polling units and wards clearly show that the people of Osun State have renewed their mandate for Governor Adeleke,” he said.

States
Police detain 14 kidnap suspects in Enugu, recover arms
The command said the suspects have, during interrogation, confessed to their involvement in several recent and past kidnap incidents across Enugu State.

States
Osun guber poll recorded peaceful voting: CDD
The CDD said the election was generally peaceful, with some operational challenges.

States
OsunDecides: INEC uploads 87.48% of election results to IReV
INEC has uploaded results from 3,292 of the 3,763 polling units to IReV.

Heading 2
DHQ warns against fake posts after attempted X account breach
DHQ said it detected an attempted unauthorised compromise of its official X account.






