The conduct of the Edo State governor and the House of Assembly on the matter of museums and returned cultural artefacts is, at best, a performance in political unseriousness. At worst, it is a calculated theatre of distraction designed to mask deeper anxieties about power, money, and legacy.
At the heart of the dispute are three institutions:
the Museum of West African Art (MOWAA), the Benin Royal Museum, and the National Benin Museum.
Their governance, funding, and purpose have become the battleground on which the Oba of Benin, the state government, and their various loyalists contest influence.
The underlying tension is simple and unspoken:
Returned Benin artefacts are not only heritage—they are accompanied by money.
And in Nigerian politics, anything accompanied by money immediately acquires multiple “fathers,” “owners,” and “liberators.”
The Oba of Benin holds the long-standing belief that the artefacts—and any associated funds—fall within his moral and historical jurisdiction. The palace sees these funds as its prerogative, part of its ancestral heritage and spiritual mandate. The state, however, insists that matters of museums, public heritage policy, and governance cannot be monopolised by the palace.
Into this tense field walked former governor Godwin Obaseki, whose communication strategy only deepened suspicions. His characterisation of MOWAA as a “private charity”—which it is under law—raises eyebrows because many believe it ought to function as a public charity with transparent, public-interest obligations. This semantic choice became ammunition for critics who accuse him of trying to privatise donor funds or to create an elite-controlled cultural enclave under the guise of modernisation.
Instead of addressing these suspicions through serious institutional mechanisms, the current governor and the House of Assembly opted for what can only be described as political choreography: setting up panels headed by known political adversaries of Obaseki. These bodies lack the fundamental attributes of a genuine inquiry:
no statutory powers of summons no obligation of truthfulness by witnesses no legal consequences for evasion no independence from political interests
If the government and legislature were genuinely committed to truth, transparency, and public confidence, the logical path would have been the establishment of a judicial commission of inquiry—a body with legal weight, independence, and the authority to cut through political narratives and institutional posturing.
Instead, what Edo has been offered is political panels masquerading as fact-finding bodies, designed more for shaping public perception than uncovering any substantive truth. These exercises serve as public relations tools, not vehicles of accountability.
In the end, the fight over museums in Edo State says less about heritage and more about the eternal Nigerian dilemma: Who gets to control money, influence, and the narrative of history? The public interest, regrettably, remains a distant spectator.
Centre for Nigeria Progress 