OLD AFRICAN RELICS, WHY WE NEED TO STORE THEM IN AFRICA

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With regards to colonialism in Africa, I’ll say it had more negative effects on us than positive. No doubt, the whites came with their education system and all of that but didn’t we have our systems, food, clothing, spirituality? Are we really nothing without the whites? Because we were conquered? If we have to echo these words to ourselves everyday then the colonialists did us real dirty.

Before the colonial masters stepped foot into our soil we had our knowledge, writing systems and arts which were presented as symbols of knowledge and power for our people and that includes our old artefacts which as I’m writing, are still locked up in various museums scattered across Europe for over a century now. This was made possible through invasions and wars which gave them golden opportunity to cart as many artefacts as they could. A quick research on google will reveal there are about 69,000 African relics in the British museum, 70,000 at France, 75,000 at Germany and 180,000 at Belgium.

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Even me writing this article had no idea the numbers were this much. Now the question is, when are our artefacts coming back to us? In fact, a ton of questions need to be asked not just the previous one I asked of which the major and most important one is, why do they need to be sent back to Africa in the first place?

“They are just objects”, some of our people may argue. “We can’t maintain them but the Europeans can maintain them better”, others would say. “We have other problems plaguing Africa, this is the least of it” lots of other Africans would say. These points are valid and I understand their argument but my aim of writing this is to tell you why it’s important. My first point is, they aren’t just mere objects. Millions of pounds or Euros are made from just taking a look at these objects at the museum. If they were mere meaningless objects, money won’t be made out of them. Any object placed at the museum is there because it has a historical meaning which could serve as a source of historical knowledge to the forth coming generations. That’s no joke!!!

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People travel from all around the world to view the wonderful crafts of our ancestors sitting pretty at European museums while their descendants back in Africa don’t get to earn a dime from the proceeds nor even have an idea of how brilliant their ancestors. As long as these “objects” are kept all across Europe, I want our people to understand that we’ll stay losing till we start asking the right questions. At the beginning of this write up, I stated earlier on that our objects were carted away by the Europeans during the slavery era. While they were being stolen along with our resources, our people were being killed for these atrocities to be made possible.

When a people are conquered, a lot of things change about them. Their cultural identity and whole existence is threatened at that moment because of all the people are not murdered, then the living ones will be subdued and they will bow to their conquerors and take up a new identity. Either by violence or non-violence, everything about the conquered people changes gradually. This is what happened to the African people of which the ripple effects of our past relationship with colonialists are very evident. This is why today, the descendants of colonized Africans think our artwork that serve as a symbol of ancestral knowledge, strength and power should remain in Europe for the descendants of their colonizers to profit from it while the descendants of the colonized people lose both economically and mentally wise.

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Even in terms of management, I perfectly understand. We have terrible leaders who can’t even repair a road and build quality infrastructure. Even the existing infrastructure they haven’t managed so is it our artefacts they’ll manage? The existing museums we have,how often do they maintain it? How much do they budget for education annually and how well do they create awareness regarding our history and cultural heritage as a people? Oh I forgot……Nigerian schools don’t even teach history as a subject anymore which in my opinion should be considered a criminal offence. By the way, I know some African countries have better maintenance culture but many of us have it very bad. So I get why our people often make that argument but I’ll give a quick solution, mental revolution>physical revolution>referendum/restructuring.

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When we decolonize our minds, we would fight for the right cause. By the time we want to make decisions on our artefacts to be brought back home, we will surely have better and visionary leaders to make decisions on our behalf. Management will definitely never be a problem. Our children and forth coming generations will learn more about their history and knowledge not only that of European gothic, classical or renaissance art. Learning about ourselves as Africans from childhood helps us know ourselves, raises our self-esteem and helps us prioritize knowledge of history and technology.

Dear Africans, though our future is important, we need to revisit the past to help us make decisions presently that will positively impact our future.