Professor Folarin Olawale Shyllon was one of Nigeria’s most important legal scholars, a historian of the African diaspora, and a leading African voice in the long struggle for the return of looted cultural property. His life’s work joined law, history and heritage into one powerful argument: stolen cultural objects are not merely works of art. They are records of memory, identity and historical violence.
Born on 23 July 1940, Shyllon began his education in Lagos, attending Yaba Methodist School and Eko Boys’ High School, Mushin. He later continued his studies in the United Kingdom at Kingston College, Surrey, and King’s College London, where he obtained legal qualifications that would anchor a career of scholarship, teaching and cultural advocacy.
His career cannot be placed in only one box. He was a lawyer, but also a historian. He was a university teacher, but also an institution-builder. He wrote about Black people in Britain, but he also became one of Africa’s respected voices in the international legal debate over looted artefacts. Across these fields, his central concern remained the same: how history, law and justice should speak to one another.
A Scholar Who Restored Black Presence to British History
In the 1970s, Shyllon made an important contribution to the study of Black history in Britain. His books, Black Slaves in Britain and Black People in Britain, 1555–1833, helped challenge the mistaken idea that Black British history began only with post-war migration.
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By tracing the presence, struggles and social conditions of Black people in Britain from the sixteenth century to the nineteenth century, Shyllon placed African and African-descended people back into a historical record from which they had too often been erased. His work stood among the early serious studies that showed Britain’s Black history was older, deeper and more complex than many conventional histories had admitted.
This scholarship mattered because it did more than add forgotten names to old records. It changed the frame of the discussion. It showed that Black people were part of Britain’s social and legal history long before the twentieth century. It connected slavery, empire, law, migration and racial identity in ways that forced readers to rethink both British history and African diaspora history.
Building Legal Education at the University of Ibadan
Shyllon’s importance also lies in his role at the University of Ibadan, one of Nigeria’s leading institutions of higher learning. The university’s law programme began in October 1981 as a Department of Law within the Faculty of the Social Sciences. In January 1984, Professor F. Shyllon took over as Head of the Department of Law.
On 28 May 1984, the Senate of the University of Ibadan approved the conversion of the department into a Faculty of Law. Shyllon became the Foundation Dean and substantive Head of the Department of Public and International Law. This placed him at the centre of one of the major institutional developments in Nigerian legal education during the period.
His role at Ibadan was not ceremonial. It reflected the work of building a faculty, shaping academic direction and helping train legal minds at a time when questions of law, due process and constitutional order were especially urgent in Nigeria.
During the 1985/86 academic session, Shyllon delivered the first inaugural lecture from the Faculty of Law. The lecture was titled Freedom, Justice and Due Process. That title captured the concerns that surrounded law and governance in Nigeria during years of political uncertainty and military rule. For Shyllon, law was not simply a profession. It was a public instrument tied to justice, accountability and human dignity.
The Turn to Cultural Heritage Law
Although Shyllon’s early reputation was strongly tied to Black history in Britain and legal education in Nigeria, his later international standing became closely connected with cultural heritage law.
He became one of Africa’s major scholarly voices in the campaign against the illicit trafficking of cultural objects. UNESCO and UNIDROIT recognised his long commitment to the protection of cultural heritage and described him as one of the important figures in the development of heritage law in Africa. His work engaged with the 1970 UNESCO Convention on illicit import, export and transfer of cultural property, as well as the 1995 UNIDROIT Convention on stolen or illegally exported cultural objects.
His significance lies in the fact that he contributed to expert discussions, legal scholarship and African perspectives that helped give the restitution debate stronger intellectual and legal grounding.
For him, the return of African artefacts was not merely a matter of sentiment. It required legal tools, documentation, negotiation, treaty participation, institutional responsibility and political will. He understood that moral outrage alone could not recover stolen heritage. African states also needed legal strategy, international cooperation and strong cultural institutions.
Law, Restitution and the African Claim
One of Shyllon’s major contributions was his sustained argument that African states had legal routes through which they could pursue the recovery of stolen, clandestinely excavated or illegally exported cultural objects.
In his work on the recovery of cultural objects by African states through UNESCO and UNIDROIT conventions, he examined the possibilities and limitations of international law. He recognised that treaties could offer useful mechanisms, but he also warned that African countries were not doing enough to use the legal means available to them.
This was a practical and realistic position. Shyllon knew that many African cultural objects in Europe and North America had complex histories of removal, sale, transfer and display. Some had been looted during military attacks. Others passed through colonial networks, dealers and private collections. Recovering them required more than a general demand. It required evidence, law, diplomacy and persistence.
That is why his work remains relevant. Today, as more museums and governments acknowledge the violent histories behind some African artefacts, many of the questions Shyllon raised decades ago have become central to global museum policy.
The Benin Bronzes and the Return of Stolen Heritage
The Benin Bronzes remain one of the clearest examples of the issues Shyllon spent much of his life addressing. In 1897, British forces attacked Benin City and removed thousands of royal and ceremonial objects from the Kingdom of Benin. These works later entered museums and private collections across Europe and North America.
For many years, African demands for their return were treated as unlikely, inconvenient or symbolic. But the ground has shifted.
In June 2025, the Netherlands returned 119 Benin Bronzes to Nigeria, one of the largest single returns of Benin objects. The Dutch government recognised that the artefacts had been looted during the British attack on Benin City and returned them to the Nigerian government.
In June 2026, Switzerland returned 18 artefacts from the Kingdom of Benin to Nigeria through three Swiss museums. Switzerland also returned five other Nigerian artefacts that had been seized in the country. The return followed provenance research connected to the Benin Initiative Switzerland and reflected the growing international pressure to confront colonial-era looting.
These developments did not begin the restitution movement. African governments, scholars, royal institutions, cultural workers and activists had been demanding returns for decades. What has changed is that more European institutions are now accepting that possession does not settle ownership, especially where objects were removed through violence, coercion or colonial domination.
A Legacy Larger Than One Discipline
Shyllon’s legacy cannot be reduced to a single title. He was a legal scholar, but his work reached beyond the courtroom and classroom. He was a historian, but his history was tied to questions of identity and justice. He was an academic, but his scholarship spoke directly to public debates about cultural memory.
His work on Black people in Britain helped restore historical depth to African and African-descended lives in Europe. His leadership at the University of Ibadan helped strengthen legal education in Nigeria. His contributions to cultural heritage law helped sharpen Africa’s legal and moral case for the return of looted artefacts.
This is what makes his life historically important. Shyllon belonged to a generation of scholars who understood that law could be a weapon against historical silence. He showed that the past was not dead material for archives and museums. It could become evidence in a struggle for recognition, dignity and repair.
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Death and Continuing Relevance
Professor Folarin Olawale Shyllon died in January 2021 at the age of 80. UNESCO records his death as 17 January 2021. His death came before the most recent wave of major Benin artefact returns from European institutions, but his scholarship had already anticipated the arguments now being accepted in official cultural policy.
The returns from the Netherlands and Switzerland show that the questions he spent decades raising have not faded. They have become more urgent. Who owns objects taken by force? What responsibilities do museums have when provenance points to violence? Can cultural heritage be separated from the communities and histories that gave it meaning?
Shyllon’s answer was clear. Cultural heritage is not decoration. It is memory, identity and law. Where it has been stolen, the demand for its return is not an act of nostalgia. It is part of the wider work of historical justice.
Author’s Note
Folarin Olawale Shyllon’s life reminds us that scholarship can become a form of justice. Through his work on Black history, Nigerian legal education and cultural heritage law, he helped expose the deep connection between memory, law and restitution. His legacy endures in today’s global debate over looted African artefacts, especially as more European institutions accept that cultural objects taken through violence should not remain permanently separated from the people and histories to which they belong.
References
UNESCO and UNIDROIT tribute to Professor Folarin Olawale Shyllon, January 2021.
University of Ibadan Faculty of Law, Department of Public and International Law historical record.
Biographical Legacy and Research Foundation profile of Professor Folarin Olawale Shyllon.
Wellcome Collection record for Black People in Britain, 1555–1833.
Cambridge University Press, International Journal of Cultural Property, “Folarin Shyllon (1940–2021).”
Government of the Netherlands, “Benin Bronzes from the Netherlands returning home to Nigeria,” 18 June 2025.
Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs, “Restitution to Nigeria: Swiss museums return 18 major artefacts,” 29 June 2026.
Folarin Shyllon, The Recovery of Cultural Objects by African States through the UNESCO and UNIDROIT Conventions and the Role of Arbitration, Uniform Law Review, 2000.
