British Government Knew Queen’s Benin Bronze Had Been “Expropriated”

The British Foreign Office knew back in the 1970s that a Benin bronze head given to the Queen by Benin’s president had been “expropriated” from the Lagos Museum. “The bronze which Gowon gave to the Queen on his [1973] state visit was a sixteenth century piece worth up to £30,000 on the market. It was in the Lagos Museum up to a few days before Gowon left for the UK when, realising he had to come bearing a suitable gift, he sent to the Museum and said ‘I’ll have that one’.”