Former Lagos State Attorney General and Commissioner for Justice, Olasupo Shasore’s Operation Legacy Looting and Losing Africa’s Kingdoms is set for launch at Alliance Française de Lagos/Mike Adenuga Centre, Ikoyi, Lagos on June 16.

According to the most commonly cited figures from a 2007 UNESCO forum, 90 per cent to 95 per cent of sub-Saharan cultural artefacts are housed outside Africa. Many, like the works from Benin, were taken during the colonial period and ended up in museums across Europe and North America.

At the Africa Museum in Belgium, Director Guido Gryseels says 85 per cent of the museum’s collection comes from the Congo — the site of Belgium’s former colony in Central Africa.

The book, according to Shasore, is a treatment of how colonial powers looted precious artefacts across Africa; still hold them in personal and public collections, some known and others unknown; the violence of the looting and its consequences.

To him, the story reaches back into the basic assumptions around colonial rule and debunks them in spectacular contemporary fashion. All these are seen through the lens of the most recent looting exercise, captured in the revealing of the top-secret colonial scheme known as “Operation Legacy”, revealing the agitators that led to the discovery.

Seeing the connected dots, he added the book also exposes the looted artefacts and looted archives and the belief that hasty return two hundred years late will make good the original sin. All these and more, he noted make this book a compelling read.