Olukoyede: We’ll enact law to ease recovery of stolen artefacts to Nigeria, Africa

Ola Olukoyede, chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), has unveiled plans to introduce a legal instrument that would facilitate the repatriation of stolen artefacts to countries in Africa.

Speaking at the 6th annual general assembly of the Network of Anti-Corruption Institutions In Africa (NACIWA) on Monday, Olukoyede said the current United Protocol for asset recovery does not address the peculiarities of African countries.

“One of the highlights of the engagement is the development of a protocol for asset recovery,” Olukoyede, who is the president of the network, said.

“We’ve been using the existing United Nations Protocol and the AU protocol which has come on board. But we just felt that those protocols did not address some peculiar needs of our sub-region.

“We are going to use the instrument of this protocol to ensure that we address those wide areas that the current protocol did not address.

“There are artefacts that have been taken to museums in the Western world and for decades if not centuries, people have been going into these museums paying to look at these artefacts.

“So what happens to the proceeds they have generated from these artefacts over the years? So we are also going to demand for the proceeds.

“We are also going to place a demand on the need for us to have interests paid on some of these monies that have been sitting in their banks. That is the peculiarity this protocol is going to bring.”

NACIWA is a regional anti-corruption network made up of 14 member countries including Benin, Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, Ivory Coast, Ghana, Guinea Conakry, Guinea Bissau, Liberia, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone and Togo.

Dignitaries present at the meeting include Vice-President Kashim Shettima; Yusuf Tuggar, minister of foreign affairs, Lateef Fagbemi, minister of justice, and Musa Aliyu, chair of the Independent Corrupt Practices and other Related Offences Commission (ICPC).

Other heads of anti-corruption agencies as well as representatives from the Economic Countries Of West African States (ECOWAS) and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) were also present at the event.

In 2022, the federal government recovered 31 Benin bronzes from three museums in the United States 125 years after they were stolen.

In July 2024, Stanley Museum of Art of the University of Iowa in the United States of America returned two looted artefacts back to the Benin kingdom.

One wooden carved mother hen and a brass plaque were reportedly among the thousands of artefacts looted from the palace of the Oba during the 1897 Benin massacre.