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Oba of Benin Enlists Rotary International to Recover Over 3,000 Looted Artefacts Still Held by Private Collectors and Museums Abroad
The Oba of Benin, Oba Ewuare II, held high‑level talks with Rotary International's John Hewko in a push to recover stolen artefacts.
The Oba of Benin, Oba Ewuare II, has opened a new diplomatic front in the long campaign to reclaim the kingdom's stolen heritage — by enlisting one of the world's largest service organisations. In a meeting at his palace in Benin City, the monarch held high‑level talks with Rotary International's CEO and Secretary‑General, John Hewko, seeking to deploy the organisation's 1.2 million members across the globe in the effort to recover over 3,000 artefacts looted during the British invasion of 1897.
Those artefacts — intricate bronzes, carved ivories, and royal regalia — are not only in museums. Many, the Oba said, are in the hands of private collectors in America and Europe, far from public view and beyond the reach of formal restitution negotiations. "I know because I have seen them," the monarch told Hewko, his words carrying the weight of a royal court that has spent over a century waiting for its cultural soul to be returned.
Hewko, who was received with full palace honours, commended the Oba's commitment to peace and mediation — qualities that have defined Ewuare II's reign since his ascension in 2016. He pledged Rotary's support in driving cultural advocacy for the artefacts' return, describing the cause as one that aligns with the organisation's global mission of building understanding and goodwill. The promise, though not yet backed by a concrete programme of action, represents a significant expansion of the palace's diplomatic toolkit. With Rotary clubs in nearly every country, the campaign for restitution now has a grassroots network of unprecedented scale.
The meeting adds to a growing momentum behind the restitution movement, which has seen European museums begin — slowly, and sometimes reluctantly — to return looted objects. But the private collections remain the hardest to touch. For the Oba, the partnership with Rotary is a recognition that the moral case for return must be made not just in government chambers, but in the communities where the artefacts now sit. The 1.2 million Rotarians may yet become the palace's most persuasive ambassadors.
Stay tuned to Unuevbo TV for more on the Benin restitution campaign, cultural heritage news, and the palace's global diplomacy.
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