France, Feb. 23 -- The Netherlands has agreed to return 119 Benin bronze statues to Nigeria, the Dutch embassy in Abuja announced this week. It becomes the first European nation to do so after Germany. The majority of these 19th-century African sculptures, however, remain in France and the UK.

Nigeria is on a quest to repatriate thousands of intricate bronze sculptures and castings that were looted by British soldiers during a raid on the then-separate Kingdom of Benin, located in what is now southwestern Nigeria, in 1897.

The Dutch embassy said in a statement the Netherlands would return 119 artefacts, after an agreement signed between its education minister and the head of Nigeria's National Commission for Museums and Monuments.

The ...