goddess of fruitfulness,
reluctantly released by Nupe
people to the Niger state
museum, and stolen some
decades ago, has been found in Italy. Emmanuel Zhiri,
executive director, Niger
State Council for Arts and
Culture, made this known to
NAN in Minna on Thursday.
"This artifact was found in
Italy recently by the
commissioner for
information, Mr Jonathan
Vatsa'', Zhiri said. i Zhiri added that it would cost
the state a "huge fortune," to
retrieve it.
He spoke on the sidelines of
the 2017 commemoration of
the world museum day with
the theme: 'Museum and
Contested Histories: Saying
the Unspeakable in Museums'. Zhiri said Niger state museum
was one of the well-
organised premier museums
with experienced
professional personnel.
He said government was
working seriously to expand
the museum by bringing in
more artifact to enrich the
state's museum. "We are working strategically to bringing in
more artifacts to uphold our
cultural heritage," he said.
"We have identified artifacts
we are going to bring in, like the musical strings of the late Walo
Shatan Gwari and late
Nupe musicians' musical
strings used in the course of
their musical career. "We are going to pay the
custodians of these musical
strings and bring them to the
Niger state museum. "It is
going to cost us about N2
million to bring them from the Niger Zone A, Zone B and
Zone C." Zhiri added that the essence
of bringing such artifacts
to Niger museum was to
preserve the history and
make it public to those who
did not know such history.
"People come in here to learn the history of different
artifacts; we keep them safe
for posterity. "Managers of
museum strive a lot to bring
in inherited artifacts from the people they were
bequeathed to because they
do not know the use as much
as we do.
"They do not know the
significance of these
artifacts. As far as they
know, they are keeping them
because they inherited them.
That is how much most of them know."
Post a Comment