It’s been described as the single largest return to date of the famous Benin antiquities looted by the British military.

The British Museum has come under fresh pressure to hand over its Benin Bronzes after the Netherlands returned more than 100 of the artefacts to Nigeria.

At the request of Nigeria, the Netherlands will today return 113 pieces of bronze art that form part of the Benin Bronzes collection, Culture Minister Eppo Bruins announced. The artifacts were looted by British soldiers from the Kingdom of Benin,

Nigeria is trying to find thousands of bronze sculptures and castings that were looted by British soldiers during a raid on the then-separate Kingdom of Benin, located in what’s now southwestern Niger

The Netherlands says it will return more than 100 Benin Bronzes that British troops looted from Nigeria in the late 19th Century and which ended up in a Dutch museum. Thousands of these culturally significant sculptures and carvings were stolen during the violent destruction of Benin City, in modern-day Nigeria's Edo state, in 1897.

In recent years, about 1,100 objects from German, Scottish, British, and French museums have been returned amid pressure over colonial-era acquisitions.

The European country made this known in a statement by its embassy in Abuja on Wednesday, February 19, 2025. The valuable artefacts were looted during the British invasion and ended up in a museum in the Netherlands,