AN AFRICAN prince is calling on Bristol Museum to return a Benin Bronze sculpture – one of thousands of priceless artefacts stolen by colonists in the 19th century – back to Nigeria. 

Benin Bronzes refer to thousands of artworks which once decorated the palace of the oba, or king, of the west African empire of Benin.

Many of the finely carved artefacts were stolen from the kingdom’s capital Benin City — now in modern-day Nigeria — by the British army in a punitive 1897 expedition.