Comment on DOS-2026-0628-0001

Dear Dr. Jones and Members of the Cultural Property Advisory Committee to the President: The Committee for Cultural Policy and Global Heritage Alliance jointly submit the attached testimony on the request for extension of the Memorandum of Understanding and imposition of U.S. import restrictions on Federal Republic of Nigeria archaeological and ethnological material. Both our organizations support the Congressionally mandated application of the 1983 Cultural Property Implementation Act. Both recognize that the United States should take every appropriate opportunity to work with Nigerian cultural and law enforcement authorities to halt any illegal trade in Nigerian artifacts with the United States. However, an extension under the CPIA is not justified by generalized sympathy for Nigeria’s colonial-era losses, by diplomatic enthusiasm for repatriation, or by the desire to express solidarity with Nigerian cultural institutions. Congress imposed specific statutory limits for renewal of cultural property agreements - that the United States must determine that the factors which justified the original agreement still pertain and that no cause for suspension exists. The existing Nigeria MOU does not satisfy that standard. The record since the agreement entered into force shows deepening uncertainty over ownership and custodianship of returned objects. This uncertainty is exacerbated by the extraordinary instability in Nigerian museum governance, and by Nigeria’s failure to provide transparent public inventories of valuable returned artifacts. Other concerns are raised by serious security conditions that make cultural tourism and interchange by U.S. citizens and institutions unsafe in much of the country. The U.S. State Department has listed all of Nigeria at a Level 3 direction to “Reconsider travel” with much of the country under a Level 4 “Do not travel” warning, explicitly telling tourists and businesspeople that the U.S. Embassy will not be able to help them – even recommending that travelers “establish a “proof of life” protocol with your loved ones, so that if you are taken hostage, your loved ones know specific questions (and answers) to ask the hostage-takers to be sure that you are alive. This helps to rule out scams.” This is not a very reassuring message. The public interest of slave descendants as part of the international community requires the global circulation and display of Nigerian artifacts. It is necessary that there be access to the true story of the Benin kingdom, which was perhaps the largest slave-trading regime in the history of the world. Imported brass manillas used in the slave trade became raw material for many of the so-called Benin Bronzes. For that reason, descendants of enslaved Africans, including the U.S. organization, the Restitution Study Group, have referred to some Benin Bronzes as “blood metal.” The Nigerian government’s volte-face on its promise of national ownership and its former President Buhari’s official grant of private ownership of all returned Benin artifacts to a private individual, the Oba of Benin, an unelected ‘king’ who is the lineal descendant of traffickers in human beings, is appalling. The Oba does not even acknowledge their participation in the 16th-19th century slave trade, much less apologize for it. The Nigerian government’s unprecedented delegation of all ownership and control over the most significant part of Nigeria’s cultural heritage to a single individual should have resulted in immediate revocation of Nigeria’s cultural property agreement. Finally, Nigeria’s prior MOU featured an overbroad Designated List that functions less as a targeted anti-looting measure than as a sweeping embargo on broad classes of Nigerian material culture. The Committee should recommend against renewal. In the alternative, any renewal should be substantially narrowed, limited to specific categories for which Nigeria can provide current, verifiable evidence of pillage driven by U.S. market demand, and conditioned on measurable commitments to public inventories, public museum access and security, and transparent Nigerian law enforcement reporting. Thank you for your attention to this summary statement. Our full testimony is attached.