Museum security: How to safeguard Nigeria’s cultural heritage

By: Akinleye Rafiu

Nigeria does not lack heritage. What we risk lacking is the capacity to protect it.

From the terracotta civilisation of Nok in the North-Central to the bronze mastery of Benin in the South-South, the spiritual artistry of Ife in the South-West, the technological sophistication of Igbo-Ukwu in the South East, and the durbar heritage of the Sokoto Caliphate in the North-West, our museums are not mere buildings. They are memory banks of the nation.

Yet, a tour of Nigeria’s museum landscape reveals a nation whose memory is vulnerable.

In the South-West, the National Museum, Lagos — Nigeria’s flagship — holds priceless Benin, Ife and Nok pieces but struggles with storage and climate control. Less than 50 kilometres from Ibadan, the National Museum of Unity, Ibadan was conceived to promote national unity through cultural objects from across Nigeria. In Ile-Ife, the National Museum, Ile-Ife houses the original Ife bronze and terracotta heads, symbols of Africa’s classical art, but faces challenges of modern surveillance and fire suppression.

In the South-South, the National Museum, Benin City, home to the celebrated Benin Bronzes, remains at the centre of the global restitution debate. A few hours away, the National Museum, Calabar, preserving the relics of the slave trade and colonial era, and the Oron Museum in Akwa Ibom, famous for its Nsibidi monoliths and ancestral figures, are battling humidity, sea-air corrosion and inadequate security fencing that makes illicit trafficking easy.

In the South-East, the National War Museum, Umuahia, tells the story of Nigeria’s civil war, while the National Museum, Enugu and the Igbo-Ukwu Museum in Anambra preserve the 9th-century Igbo-Ukwu bronzes — arguably Nigeria’s most sophisticated archaeological find. Many of these sites still run manual registers, making it difficult to detect when an object is missing.

In the North-Central, the National Museum, Jos remains one of Nigeria’s most important ethnographic museums with its Nok terracottas and the adjacent Museum of Traditional Nigerian Architecture (MOTNA) — an open-air display of Nigeria’s architectural heritage from Kanuri to Tiv huts. In Kwara, the Esie Museum, home to over 1,000 soapstone figures, is the first museum in Nigeria but today operates far below its potential.

In the North-West, the National Museum, Kaduna, the Gidan Makama Museum, Kano, which documents the history of the Kano Emirate and pre-colonial industrialization, and the Kanta Museum, Argungu in Kebbi, which holds relics of the Kebbi-Songhai wars, represent a deep Islamic and Hausa heritage that is poorly digitised and therefore vulnerable to cross-border smuggling.

In the North-East, the National Museum, Maiduguri and the Gidan Madara Museum, Yola, custodian of Adamawa’s diverse cultures, have had to contend not only with infrastructural decay but with the direct impact of insurgency on cultural sites.

And binding all these together are the Unity Museums — the National Museum of Unity in Ibadan, Enugu and Abuja — established deliberately after the civil war to use culture as a tool for national integration. If our Unity Museums are insecure, our national unity project itself is insecure.

How then do we safeguard this heritage?

First, we must move from analogue to digital. Every object in the National Museum Lagos, Benin Museum, Jos Museum, and Esie Museum must be photographed, 3D-scanned and inventoried on a centralised, cloud-based database accessible to the National Commission for Museums and Monuments (NCMM), Customs, Immigration and INTERPOL. A stolen object that is not documented is lost forever.

Second, we must re-engineer museum security. A museum cannot be protected by padlocks and night watchmen alone. Solar-powered CCTV, electronic access control, intruder alarms, smoke detectors and climate-controlled vaults must become standard — from Oron to Argungu. The Ibadan Chamber of Commerce and Industry believes private sector participation in providing these technologies on lease or PPP basis can bridge government funding gaps.

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Third, heritage security must be community-based. The youth in Benin, Calabar, Esie and Kano must see the museum not as a government building but as their own source of livelihood through tourism, craft sales, virtual tour guiding and licensed e-commerce of replicas.

Finally, we must fund heritage from heritage. A well-secured, digitized National Museum, Benin or National Museum, Lagos can generate foreign exchange through virtual ticketing, international exhibitions, and e-commerce platforms for Nigerian crafts. Heritage must be made bankable.

Nigeria’s heritage survived colonialism, civil war and neglect. It must not be lost to carelessness in peacetime. Securing our museums — from the Unity Museum in Ibadan to the Oron Museum on the Atlantic coast — is securing Nigeria itself.

Akinleye Akinwale Rafiu is the Assistant Chief Assistant Antiquities protection officer. (ACAAPO, National Museum of Unity Ibadan.