* Nigeria delighted, asks for more returns
* UK universities in heated debate over colonial legacy
* British Museum also under pressure over Benin artworks
(Adds Nigerian reaction and details on college benefactor)
By Estelle Shirbon
LONDON, Nov 28 (Reuters) - A Cambridge University college
said on Thursday it would return an antique statue of a cockerel
to Benin City in Nigeria, more than 120 years after it was
looted by British colonial forces.
The move by Jesus College will likely step up pressure on
other institutions holding plunder from the historic Kingdom of
Benin and other objects from other cultures taken by
colonialists during the 19th century.
Nigeria said it was delighted by the anonuncement and
launched a broad appeal for museums across the world to return
its heritage.
"Considering the hundreds of Benin Bronzes looted during
that occupation, the decision to return the cockerel is like a
drop in the ocean, but it is an important drop and we welcome
it," the Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai
Mohammed, said.
Jesus College staff said research had shown there was no
doubt the cockerel had been looted from the Court of Benin, the
seat of the once-mighty West African kingdom.
"This royal ancestral heirloom belongs with the current Oba
at the Court of Benin," the college said on its website,
referring to the traditional and still influential ruler of what
is now part of modern-day Nigeria.
British museums have long resisted campaigns for the return
of Nigeria's Benin Bronzes, Greece's Elgin Marbles, Ethiopia's
Magdala treasures and other loot, often citing legislation that
bans them from disposing of their collections.
But the debate has heated up in recent years, particularly
in Britain's universities, where students and campaigners have
called for greater recognition of how the colleges benefited
from colonial-era riches and funding.
Jesus College said on Thursday that from now on it would
"acknowledge and contextualise" the role in its history of
Tobias Rustat, a major 17th century benefactor who benefitted
from the transatlantic slave trade.
Rustat, an investor in the Royal African Company which was
one of the major slave-trading institutions, is buried in the
college chapel. A portrait of him hangs in the postgraduate
common room, and scholarships in his name are still awarded to
some students.
"TIPPING POINT"
Dan Hicks, a professor of archaeology at the Pitt Rivers
Museum in Oxford, said Britain had reached a tipping point in
the national dialogue about the restitution of looted objects.
"In the past, our attention on this matter was focused on
national collections like the British Museum," he told the
Guardian newspaper. "But in reality such loot is held in dozens
of institutions across the regions: city museums, art galleries
and the collections of universities."
The statue of the cockerel was given to Jesus College in
1905 by the father of a student and was on display in the dining
hall until 2016, when it was put into storage following student
protests over its provenance.
The British Museum, which has around 100 objects from Benin
on display, announced last year that it would loan some of them
to a new Benin Royal Museum in Benin City that is due to open in
2023.
Along with representatives from Nigeria and from museums in
Austria, Germany, the Netherlands and Sweden, the British Museum
is a member of the Benin Dialogue Group, which is working on the
creation of the new Nigerian museum.
The idea is that the European museums would contribute
objects from their collections, on a rotating basis, to the
Benin City museum's displays. The British Museum has agreed a
three-year loan that could potentially be extended.
"The loan is being developed in close dialogue with the
Benin Royal Court and the Benin Royal Museum project
team, although no final decisions have yet been made concerning
specific objects," the British Museum said on Wednesday.