The pressure on European and North American art institutions to restitute the looted Benin bronzes back to their home country has been blowing hot for the past month and Germany has decided to lead by taking action.

Away from just making promises to return the historical artifacts to Nigeria, the German government and directors of the country's leading museums at a meeting on Thursday, April 29, made a commitment to start returning the Benin bronze artworks by 2022.

"We are facing up to our historical and moral responsibility to illuminate and come to terms with Germany’s colonial past,” federal culture minister Monika Grütters said in a statement following the meeting. “The way we handle the Benin bronzes is a touchstone for this. We are aiming for as much transparency as possible and above all, substantial restitutions. We are planning the first returns in 2022.”

Present at the meeting to map out the timeline for the return were the culture ministers of four German states as well as the heads of ethnological museums in Berlin, Stuttgart, Cologne, Leipzig and Hamburg, all of which have substantial collections of Benin bronzes. In all, about twenty-five German museums possess looted Benin bronze objects, and the remaining museums not represented at the meeting have been invited to take part in this process.

According to German officials, the deal includes further discussions with their Nigerian counterparts on the restitution of the artworks and beyond that, an agreement on future cooperation on how the Benin bronzes can be shown in Germany in the future.

Also included is a partnership between Nigeria and Germany in which the European country will participate in archaeological excavations in Benin City, training of Nigerian museum staff and the construction of the proposed state-of-the-art Edo Museum for West African Art.

The participants also agreed that the Contact Point for Collections from Colonial Contexts, a central entity managed by the Cultural Foundation of the States (Kulturstiftung der Länder), will publish details of all the Benin bronzes in German museums online by 15 June. The museums agreed to provide comprehensive provenance information for each object by the end of 2021.

Hailing the meeting and resolutions reached as "a turning-point in our approach to colonial history," the German foreign minister Heiko Maas, who has been pivotal in the decision to restitute Benin bronzes in German possession, beamed with optimism that the remaining steps leading to 2022 when the bronzes will be back in Benin will be seamless now that the government, states and museum are on the same page.

The Benin bronzes were looted from the ancient Benin kingdom in present-day Edo State, midwestern Nigeria, in 1897 after British troops invaded the kingdom in the days leading to colonization. They have since been spread across museums, organizations and private collections across Europe and North America. 

To learn more about the fate of the bronzes and the Western museums and institutions that have signified a willingness to restitute the artifacts to Nigeria, Aworanka has a number of articles that explore this.