Reframing the Present by Recontextualising The Past: Towards Decolonising Nigerian Museums

Abstract

Museums in Nigeria, as in other colonised countries across the globe, are often perceived as stemming from a Western social construct with origins in colonial administration. However, such a general notion fails to consider local ways of recording, presenting and preserving traditional artefacts: ones that specifically represent a people and its culture. During the colonial era, the establishment of museums was born out of the necessity to preserve immense collections that reflected the country’s diversity and to encourage the understanding and study of Nigeria from an interior, rather than exterior, colonialist, perspective. Another motivation behind establishing museums during the colonial period was to deter pillaging and theft and encourage the repatriation of objects that were illegally removed by ethnographers and researchers in the then-British colony (Murray 1967). Nevertheless, establishing museum institutions during the colonial era catered more to white settlers than to Indigenous audiences in Nigeria, since they showcased various cultures of the host community for the enjoyment of foreigners. As a result, various communities became hesitant to release their sacred objects to western collectors and institutions; they resisted colonial collection practices because they negated local identities, sacredness and value systems. Artefacts became effectively ‘encased’ in museums and storage spaces, alienating them from their original identities and owners, even while held in their country of origin. This paper investigates how recontextualising the past can aid in decolonising museum spaces, specifically highlighting how the inclusion of local languages in museum exhibitions and materials can serve as one such tool. Using a case-study approach, the paper investigates how the incorporation of local languages in two public museums in Lagos, Nigeria play an important role in efforts to decolonise these institutions — and might be applied to museums elsewhere.