The member representing Ovia Federal Constituency in the House of Representatives, Hon. Dennis Idahosa, has congratulated Benin monarch, Oba Ewuare II, over an official gazette issued by the Federal Government affirming the traditional leader’s ownership and custody of repatriated artefacts looted from the ancient kingdom several decades back.
The gazette became necessary after the state government, moved to take ownership of the returned artefacts and thus set the stage for a dispute that dismayed many, considering the reverence the monarch enjoys from his subject and the hitherto settled position of the artefacts as the possession of his ancestors and the palace.
In his congratulatory message, Hon. Idahosa commended the Federal Government for “giving the Oba’s rightful ownership and custody the force of law through the gazette, and for putting an end to the dispute started by those whose desperate opportunism and short-sightedness led them to commit a most disrespectful and condemnable affront to the throne.
According to him, through the gazette, the FG has drawn a clear line in the sand in line with the wishes of self-respecting sons and daughters of the Benin Kingdom who not only surrender to the cultural and spiritual leadership of the Oba but also hold him and the throne he occupies in the highest possible esteem.
“Attention must now turn to the successful completion of the repatriation exercise and I urge all to join their voices to those calling for restorative justice for our great Kingdom, the country Nigeria, and indeed the African continent for the decades of pillaging, violent disruptions, and other negative acts carried out by foreign colonisers to the detriment of the people and the development of the society,” he concluded.
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