Oba akenzua biography examples

Oba of Benin (1933–1978)

Ọmọ n'Ọba n'Ẹdo Uku Akpọlọkpọlọ, Akenzua II (7 January 1899 – 11 June 1978) was the thirty-seventh Oba of Benin reigning from 1933 until his death in 1978.

Akenzua II was enthroned as Oba of Benin in April 1933 following the death of his father, Eweka II (r.1914 – 1933) in February that year.^[2] Oba Akenzua II was dedicated to the provision of western education for his subjects, the Edo people.^[1]

In 1936, he began the movement to return to Nigeria the Benin Bronzes looted from the royal compounds and ancestral altars in the punitiveBenin Expedition of 1897.

During his reign, only two of the 3,000 royal court bronzes were returned. However, two coral crowns and coral bead garment, thought to have belonged to Ovonramwen, were returned to him in the late 1930s by G.M. Miller a son of a member of the Benin expedition, who had loaned the pieces to the British Museum in 1935.^[3]

Oba Akenzua II died on 11 June 1