The Restitution Journey of Ngonnso from the Nso Kingdom in Cameroon

Case Study

The Restitution Journey of Ngonnso from the Nso Kingdom in Cameroon

At a Glance

Status

Contact

Current Location

Berlin, Germany, Humboldt Forum

Researcher

Dr Bulami Edward Fonyuy

Belonging

Ngonnso is a deity embodied in a carved wooden statue that is adorned with cowrie shells . She was created in honour of Ngonnso, the founding mother of the Nso Fondom (Kingdom), in Cameroon. She is regarded as the incarnation of the Nso people’ s worldview.

Place of Origin

Nso Fondom (Kingdom), in the Bamenda grassfields Northwest region. of Cameroon.

Significance

Ngonnso  serves as an important connection to the founding history of the Nso Fondom. She is named after Princess Ngonnso, who left Rifem in the Adamawa Region of Cameroon in rebellion against the choice of a successor to the throne, and established a new Nso Fondom, of which she was the leader. As a deity, Ngonnso is also central to the spiritual life of the Nso people. Several rituals are organised around her to ensure the community’s survival and livelihood. The stories that are told through and about Ngonnso are instrumental for passing on historical knowledge and cultural practices from one Nso generation to the next.  

Current Location

Ngonnso is housed at the Humboldt Forum in Berlin, Germany. 

Circumstances of Removal

The Ngonnso deity was stolen from the Palace of the Nso Fondom in 1902 during a punitive expedition led by German colonial military officer Kurt von Pavel. von Pavel was initially warmly received into the Palace, however when his actions began to reveal sinister intentions, the Fon of Nso at the time, Sehm Mbinglo II – Paramount ruler of Ngonnso, fled with his notables.

In the absence of the Fon, von Pavel and his military unit undertook a mass looting of spiritual and cultural treasures, including Ngonnso, and then wholly destroyed the Palace by burning it to the ground. In 1903 the deity was donated to the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation in Berlin, Germany, by von Pavel, who claimed that the deity was a gift to him from the Fon of Nso – an impossible assertion, given that the Fon was not present.

Impact of Loss

Since Ngonnso is significant to most aspects of the Nso people’s lives, her removal has had an impact on various levels. Without the spiritual protection of Ngonnso, the Nso people’s well-being has been disrupted. Many of them were abducted and brutalised, forced into unjust labour practices and even killed for their resistance to colonial rule. This, coupled with the looting of treasures and burning of the palace, went on to have multiple socio-economic impacts that are still faced by the community today.

The poor harvests and famine that have periodically been experienced over the years, the premature death of two of the Nso Fons, and even the current civil unrest in Anglophone Cameroon have been attributed to the absence of Ngonnso. The Nso people could also no longer perform the rituals and cultural practices that were enacted through or with Ngonnso, leaving a major spiritual and cultural vacuum in their lives. Many of the rituals that the Nso people perform now, through the Fon, are to appease Ngonnso’s wrath, to ensure – at the very least – their survival.

Chronology of Restitution Efforts

When Ngonnso was dislodged from the Nso Palace, the community had no idea where she was taken. In 1974, Nso community member Bongasu Tanla Kishani encountered Ngonnso on display at the Ethnological Museum in Dahelm, while he was a student in Germany. He reported this to the leaders of the Nso Fondom, who took it upon themselves to seek her return. 

From 1998 to 2016,  Sehm Mbinglo I – Paramount Fon of the Nso, was supported by Nso elites, academics and community-centric organisations, largely within NSODA, in writing  a series of correspondences. These were addressed to:

  • German political leaders, articulating the importance of Ngonnso to the community, and demanding her return;
  • The Cameroonian Minister of Culture via the Provincial Delegate for Culture for the North West Region, requesting national government support in pursuing the return of Ngonnso;
  • The Ethnological Museum in Dahlem – where according to the advice of German and Israeli dignitaries, Ngonnso was being held – to demand her return;
  • President Paul Biya – Head of the State of Cameroon, seeking his intervention in the restitution process of Ngonnso.  

These correspondences were not acknowledged, as neither German nor Cameroonian public policy mandated that the intended recipients respond to demands for restitution. There is also a possibility that unreliable letter mailing services may have resulted in the correspondences not being received.

Although considerable frustrations was experienced at the level of connecting with national and German government officials, as well as the Ethnological Museum in Dalhelm during this period, efforts were still being made to reestablish Ngonnso’s rightful place in the Nso community. In 2005, Nso community members based in Douala initiated a Yahoo! group [shundzev@yahoogroups.com] to share Nso-related news with each other, and to discuss developments of their ancestral land.

The group was led by Martin Jumban, and was open to Nso community members from across the world. Through this social digital platform, they were able to discuss possible strategies for the restitution of Ngonnso. It is in this forum that Bulami Edward Fonyuy [cultural activist and consultant on issues of Ngonnso] announced the rebranding of, Nso Cultural Week (NGAM LII WONG) into “The Ngonnso Cultural Festival” in 2007. This was per the unanimous adoption of this project proposal in the Nso Cultural and Development Association’s (NSODA) Annual General Meeting that year.

The first iteration of the festival was set to take place in 2008, with the objective of sensitising modern-day Nso community members, and the world, to the history of, and fight for, Ngonnso. The intellectual and financial resources required to realise this event were pooled together by Nso community members who were resident in Cameroon, and in the diaspora.

Through speeches, workshops, radio and media campaigns, and conversations and partnerships with German friends, Cameroonian government officials and independent community organisations, NSODA spearheaded the sensitisation process, in the lead up to the festival. The Nso diasporic community complemented these activities by undertaking protests in Germany. The attention and awareness that was garnered through these processes mobilised many members of the public to attend the festival in April 2008. In March 2008, shortly before the festival was set to take place, a replica statue of Ngonnso was built and erected at the centre of the Nso Palace main courtyard; Maandze Ngaiy. On the 8th of April, the replica was inaugurated and unveiled by Sehm Mbinglo I – Paramount Fon of the Nso, and Daniel Pandjounou – Senior Divisional Officer for Bui, who was representing Cameroon’s Minister of Arts and Culture.

The curiosity with which the replica of Ngonnso was met, and the flurry of photos that were taken with her during the festival’s launch event drew attention to the lack of reference material around Ngonnso, particularly her appearance. This ignited researchers and the artistic community to create works of knowledge and art that made her image and her story visible. This took the form of educational and story books, songs, drawings and paintings in public spaces and for home exhibition, trinkets and the production of a uniform fabric for the Nso.

The increased visibility of Ngonnso, through artistic representations, people’s social media posts of their photos with her replica, and sharing of footage from the festival drew the attention of local and international media houses, including CNN. It also laid the foundation for documentaries that covered the multi-layered value of Ngonnso, and the impacts of her absence on her people and land, to be produced in the years that followed. 

Although the impactful Nso Cultural Festival was hosted annually until 2016, and the story and discussion of Ngonnso increased on both local and international, official and informal media platforms, the German and Cameroonian government officials remained unmoved in their non-responsiveness to the Nso community’s demand for restitution.

In 2015 the Kaiser’s Palace in Berlin was reconstructed and renamed The Humboldt Forum. Belongings, human ancestors and archived documents from other museums in Germany were transferred to the Humboldt Forum, including Ngonnso, who had previously been held at the Ethnological Museum in Dalhem.  The transfer of Ngonnso was not made public, nor was she displayed . This led to a new search for the location of Ngonnso. 

In 2016 Dzebam Godlove, an Nso community member who had learnt about Ngonnso in Cameroon in 2015, moved to Berlin to study. There he met a fellow Nso community member and student,  Semaiy Gad Shinyuy. Shinyuy, who had been an active member of the diasporic community that was advocating for the restitution of Ngonnso in Germany, advised Godlove that Ngonnso had been moved to Humboldt Forum, but that he had not been able to gain access. Godlove advised Shinyuy that his German hosts, who were members of the German Presbyterian church choir in Berlin, were well connected, and would be able to assist them in gaining access. Together they visited Humboldt Forum, where they found Ngonnso wrapped in polythene paper bags, stored on a shelf in the keller (the bunker) of the Humboldt Forum. They photographed Ngonnso in this compromised state, and shared the images on social media. The Nso diasporic community in Berlin then began to publicly protest for the restitution of Ngonnso. 

In 2019, following growing public criticism, particularly from multiple African diasporic communities resident in Germany, regarding Germany’s silence around its violent colonial past and its continued repercussions,  the German Contact Point for Objects from Colonial Contexts initiative was established. The objective of the initiative was to facilitate dialogues and negotiations between communities of origin who were seeking restitution, and the museums that held their belongings or human ancestors.

In addition, multi-stakeholder conferences and workshops were organised by external funders, to further sensitise museum stakeholders in Germany to the impact that the violence of colonialism, and the looting of belongings and human ancestors that accompanied it, had on communities. It is through this forum that the Nso community were brought into conversation with museum stakeholders of the Humboldt Forum; finally giving the Nso community a platform to express the significance Ngonnso had to them, and the implications of continuing to keep her away from Nsoland. Non-governmental organisations who empathised with the Nso community’s demand and fight also took up the opportunity to offer support in various aspects. Conferences that brought Nso community resource persons, museum authorities and Government representatives from both Germany and Cameroon together were organised, and in Cameroon training seminars were organised for lawyers to empower them to navigate the legal landscape with regards to restitution.

In 2020, Sylvie Vernyuy Njobati – an Nso community member, activist and founder of Sysy House of Fame (now Regartless), ,leveraged this moment of open and active dialogue to launch the #BringBackNgonnso campaign. This hashtag was added to social media posts such as upcoming protests or events, ongoing restitution activism work,  calls for the restitution of Ngonnso, stories, archival photographs of precolonial life and colonial occupation, photographs of the Nso Cultural Festival, short documentaries and open letters. The German stakeholders who were implicated in the holding of Ngonnso were also tagged in the posts.  The campaign went viral on Twitter (now ‘X’), further publicising the restitution efforts of the Nso people. The global attention that the campaign received put  pressure on German museum officials to respond to ongoing demands for the return of Ngonnso. The effect was the same on  Cameroonian government officials. 

In 2021, Njobati, who had initiated the social media campaign independently, entered into an agreement with Sehm Mbinglo I – Paramount Fon of the Nso, and Nso Cultural and Development Association (NSODA) to unify their efforts to bring back Ngonnso. She, along with Semaiy Gad Shinyuy (who had led the diasporic community protests and engagements in Berlin since 2016) and Yay Joyce Sah were tasked with leading the negotiations for the return of Ngonnso. In this role as Nso emissary, Njobati travelled between Cameroon and Germany to report the diasporic community’s progress to the Fon of Nso and NSODA, to obtain guidance around strategies, and to gather the documentation that was required to facilitate negotiations. This collaborative approach was beneficial for the progress of the calls for return as it enabled collective pressure to be exerted on the German museum.

On 25 May 2022, at a cabinet meeting,  the President of Cameroon, Paul Biya, announced that an inter-ministerial committee would be established in the Ministry of Culture to coordinate and finalise the restitution demands of various communities. He further stated that a National Strategy for the Repatriation of Cameroonian Artefacts would be drafted, to support the formulation of restitution policies in the country. After nearly six years of non-response, the Fon of Nso also finally received correspondence from President Biya advising him that his community had the full support of the government in their efforts to restitute Ngonnso. These government-led activities indicated full endorsement of the restitution process and demands for return.

In June 2022 Mr Hermann Parzinger, President of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation (SPK) [the German federal body that oversees 27 museums, including the Humboldt Forum], was authorised to enter into a restitution agreement with the Cameroonian government and the Nso community, regarding Ngonnso. This decision was based on a provenance research report that was commissioned by SPK. On 27 June 2022, Parzinger held a press conference with Njobati and Valerie Viban [a Cameroonian policy advisor, and international co-operation and development specialist who was working for German-based organisation – Agiamondo]. Parzinger officially handed over a signed letter to Njobati which stated that Ngonnso had been acquired under unclear circumstances, and should be returned. This act placed the restitution of Ngonnso squarely in the hands of the Cameroonian government. The intention was for Ngonnso to be repatriated to the State of Cameroon, and for the State of Cameroon to then return her to the Nso community.

Following the announcement of this decision, Sehm Mbinglo I – Paramount Fon of Nso made a working visit to Germany from 12 – 18 November 2022. The objective of the journey was to spotlight that Ngonnso rightfully belonged to the Nso community, to further sensitise people to the violent history of her removal and value she held for the Nso people, to perform rites and rituals over Ngonnso that would reconnect her to her people, and to further discuss the details of the repatriation. The Fon of Nso and his entourage were welcomed to Berlin by the Nso diasporic community, then proceeded to Humboldt Forum. Once at the Humboldt Forum, they were accompanied by the Cameroonian Ambassador to Germany, His Excellency Ndocki Victor, to indicate the national government’s endorsement of the restitution endeavours. In the presence of his entourage, the Nso diasporic community, the ambassador and stakeholders from the Humboldt Forum, the Fon came face to face with Ngonnso for the first time. He was the first Fon of Nso to stand before her in nearly 100 years. He performed a reconnection ritual, which included cleansing water, offerings of plants and soil from Nsoland, and  incantations delivered in Lamnso, the language of the Nso Community. Over the following days, the Fon of Nso and his entourage entered into discussion about the repatriation of Ngonnso. The  German Contact Point for Objects from Colonial Contexts also briefed them on the German policies on restitution during this time.

In October 2023,  the Cameroonian Inter-Ministerial Committee in Charge for the Restitution of Cameroonian Cultural Properties Illegally Exported Abroad, which had been established earlier that year, made a working visit to Germany. Their mandate was to engage in the diplomatic State-to-State protocols that were required to restitute the Cameroonian belongings that had been identified in May 2022, including Ngonnso. For this mission, they were required to identify which Cameroonian belongings would be repatriated first, and to determine the logistics of return, as well as additional compensation for the communities whose belongings were removed. The visit ended without any concrete plans in place.

Despite the lack of clarity, the Fon of Nso continued to prepare for the return of Ngonnso, by establishing a local Ngonnso Restitution Committee. Led by Professor Verkijika Fanso [President of the Nso Cultural and Development Association] this committee was charged with serving as the contact point between the Cameroonian State and the Nso community once Ngonnso is repatriated.

In January 2024, the inter-ministerial committee undertook a second working visit. This time Ngonnso was named as one of the belongings that would be repatriated, as part of the first segment of repatriations to Cameroon.

Current Status

Contact

Despite the various public announcements and symbolic handover ceremonies that the Humboldt Forum, and by extension Germany, has held to signal their intention to return Ngonnso to the Nso people, by way of the Cameroonian government, she has yet to be repatriated to the State of Cameroon.

Contents

Dr Bulami Edward Fonyuy

Case Study Researcher

Dr Bulami Edward Fonyuy

Dr Bulami Edward Fonyuy, who is a literary scholar and holds a PhD in Postcolonial Literatures, with a specialisation in Oral Literature,  conducted research on this case study. He is a member of the Nso community, and served as the Nso Cultural and Development Association (NSODA) Secretary General from 2009 – 2017. In this role he supported Sehm Mbinglo I – Paramount Fon of the Nso with drafting correspondence to various stakeholders in the Ngonnso restitution case. He also sensitised Nso community members and the general public – in Cameroon and abroad – to the issues surrounding the restitution of Ngonnso, especially through publications and presentation. He also actively mobilised Nso community members to participate in the fight for Ngonnso, as the ideator and main promoter of the annual Nso Cultural Festival. He remained actively involved in the more recent restitution efforts surrounding Ngonnso, as a cultural consultant for Ngonnso and a member of the entourage that accompanied the Fon of Nso to Berlin in 2022.  His intimate and longstanding knowledge of, and involvement in, Ngonnso’s restitution journey were invaluable in piecing together this wonderfully detailed case study. 

Shortly after completing his tenure with ORA, Bulami began lecturing on Heritage and Restitution in the University of Bamenda Cameroon. He also authoredColonial Disruptions on African Cultural Heritage : Documenting the Ngonnso Restitution Saga from 1902-2024; a deep dive into the challenges and possibilities of African restitution, based on his experience with Ngonnso.

Methodology and Field Experience

Bulami joined ORA with a wealth of existing knowledge and networks around the restitution journey of Ngonnso, having been an active participant in these efforts. Through journaling his personal experiences, he was able to map the bulk of the activities that had been initiated in the last twenty years, particularly through the Nso Cultural and Development Association. From this foundational skeleton of information, he then identified gaps, and sought further details through oral interviews with the various stakeholders who had been involved , archival material, and desktop research, which included audio-visual documentation of community sensitisation and mobilisation

During his field research,  Bulami found that some knowledge holders were suspicious of the intentions of the research, as they believed the research would be sold for profit. In light of this, many of the people he engaged with anticipated a handsome remuneration for sharing their knowledge.

Bulami was able to counter these assumptions by sharing the objectives of the research, and the intended site of publication [ORA’s open data platform], and this  garnered trust and open sharing. Bulami also undertook this research during the War of secession in the Anglophone regions of Cameroon, which made it difficult to travel and to gain access to knowledge holders and archival material outside of his immediate area.  Rolling power cuts in Cameroon, which also had an impact on internet connectivity, added a layer of frustration during the research process. Since the restitution of Ngonnso was an active case in the process of sensitive negotiations when Bulami undertook his research, he was concerned about how much detail about developments to add onto the open data platform. This was resolved by focusing on the Nso community’s perspective, and the work they have done over the years, for the case to be at the stage of State-to-State repatriation negotiations.  

Duration of Research:

This research data was gathered as part of the second case study research cohort, from November 2023 – February 2024. The information in this case study profile reflects the status of this restitution case as at February 2024.

The Restitution Journey of Ngonnso from the Nso Kingdom in Cameroon

The Restitution Journey of Ngonnso from the Nso Kingdom in Cameroon

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