The Netherlands has agreed to return a collection of 119 artifacts to Nigeria, the latest objects to be sent back to their homelands as museums grapple with their colonial-era holdings

It is the latest example of a country announcing that it will repatriate a group of these objects, which were looted by the British as part of a punitive expedition in 1897

The Netherlands says it will return more than 100 Benin Bronzes that British troops looted from Nigeria in the late 19th Century and which ended up in a Dutch museum. Thousands of these culturally significant sculptures and carvings were stolen during the violent destruction of Benin City, in modern-day Nigeria's Edo state, in 1897.

In recent years, about 1,100 objects from German, Scottish, British, and French museums have been returned amid pressure over colonial-era acquisitions.

The European country made this known in a statement by its embassy in Abuja on Wednesday, February 19, 2025. The valuable artefacts were looted during the British invasion and ended up in a museum in the Netherlands,