Prince piles pressure on Cambridge college with demand to return his great-grandfather’s bronze

A CAMPAIGN to return a bronze cockerel held at Cambridge University to Nigeria has gained pace after an intervention by the great-grandson of the king from whom it was stolen by Victorian explorers.

The cockerel, which has resided in Jesus College since 1930, was removed from public view in March after protests from students that it celebrated a “colonial narrative”. The protests came in the wake of the “Rhodes Must Fall” campaign to remove the statue of Cecil Rhodes, the 19th-century colonialist, from Oxford’s Oriel College.

Having removed the cockerel from display in the college’s main hall, dons at Jesus College are now agonising over whether to bow to the students’ demand for the further step of repatriating it to Nigeria.

The academics are nervous not just about accusations of pandering to “political correctness”, but also setting a precedent for demands to repatriate other artefacts from the “Benin Bronze collection”, much of which is in the British Museum.

The students’ campaign gained further momentum after winning the backing of Prince Edun Akenzua, the great-grandson of Oba (king) Ovoramwen, from whose kingdom the bronzes were looted in 1897. In an interview with

at his home in Benin City in southern Nigeria, Prince Akenzua, 82, disclosed that he had now written to the Jesus College students’ union to express his support for repatriation.

“It is something I have been campaigning for myself for many years without much success,” said Prince Akenzua, whose family still serve as traditional rulers in Benin City. “It is about time these statues came home to their original owners.”

In recent decades, Prince Akenzua has been the driving force behind Nigerian efforts to plead for the bronzes’ return, giving testimony to the Commons in 2000 and also lobbying the British Museum.

However, he said that so far his efforts had been politely rebuffed – mainly on the grounds that the bronzes’ safekeeping could not be guaranteed in Nigeria.

“It is ridiculous,” he said wryly. “It is like tracking down a thief who has stolen your car, only for him to tell you that you can’t have it back because there is a risk it might get stolen again.” The Benin Bronzes were a collection of 3,000 pieces of art taken by British troops during reprisals for the killing of nine of their countrymen in a trade dispute between London and the Benin monarch. ‘It is like a thief telling you that you can’t have your car back because there is a risk it might get stolen’ In one of the less glorious episodes of British colonial history, a 500-strong punishment squad of British soldiers mowed down locals with newly manufactured Maxim machine guns. They then burnt down the monarch’s palace. Diaries kept by troops at the time record the taking of the bronzes – some of which are 700 years old – as “loot”. The cockerel was given to Jesus College by George William Neville, a member of the Benin expedition. It was adopted as a symbol because three cockerels’ heads appear on the college crest. Bronzes from the looted hoard are also in museums in Germany and US, but the British museum has the biggest collection.

Also excited at the prospect of getting the bronzes back is Theophilus Umogbai, curator of Benin City’s modest national heritage museum. Built on a spot where King Ovoramwen’s forces surrendered, it is home to a number of bronzes that survived the looting, although it is currently closed for refurbishment.

Mr Umogbai also dismissed another excuse that British officials had given to justify keeping the bronzes – that the Nigerian museum authorities did not know how to maintain them properly.

“Many of these bronzes were already several hundred years old when they were looted in 1897, and they were in perfectly good condition then,” he said. “I am sure if our ancestors managed to look after them then, we can do so now.”

A spokesman for Cambridge University said that a decision on the future of the cockerel was expected in coming months.