Colonial crimes: Time for compensation

By Mahmood Isiaka

At a one-day consultative forum recently with all African Ambassadors in Nigeria organized by the Senate Committee on Reparations and Repatriation, Senator Ned Nwoko, the committee chairman, said the meeting was ‘’a moment for redefining Africa’s place in history, not as a victim seeking sympathy, but as a continent asserting its rightful place in global justice conversation demanding accountability, restitution, and respect.’’

He said the committee was formally set up on July 17 2024, ‘’with a mandate to address centuries-old injustices inflicted upon Nigerians through slavery, colonialism, exploitation and systemic discrimination, both historical and contemporary.’’ On July 19, 2025. Mali hosted a forum that became part of a movement for historical justice. Against the backdrop of the African Union’s decision to declare 2025 the year of Reparations, the forum’s theme was an equivocal statement: ‘’Colonial crimes: time for compensation.’’

This call is gaining increasing resonance across the continent, including Nigeria, where the legacy of colonialism remains a historical and socioeconomic issue. In the Federal Republic of Germany, an inquiry by the Green party forced the ruling coalition under Chancellor Friedrich Merz to plan to address the ‘’injustices committed under German colonial rule’’ in Africa especially in countries such as Namibia and Tanzania

But the government said: ‘’The concept of reparations in international law arises from the violation of an international obligation,’’ which, it notes, did not exist at the time the injustices were committed.

‘’The concept of reparations is therefore not applicable in the context of Germany’s colonial past,’’ the government affirmed. However, the Green Party politician, Claudia Roth, still officially submitted the inquiry with the support of her party colleagues namely Awet Tesfaiesus and Jamila Schafer. ‘’Remembering the injustices committed by Germany is a prerequisite for a lasting partnership with countries affected by colonialism. This requires empathy, not formal legal denial’’ Roth said.

Tesfeisus expressed similar view when she told the Tagesspiegel newspaper that ‘’We cannot hide behind formal legal arguments –especially not in a republic whose constitution places inviolable human dignity at the heart of its statehood.’’

German colonization of Africa began in the 1880s, leading to the creation of four protectorates: Togo, Cameroon, German Southwest Africa (Namibia), and German East Africa (Tanzania, Rwanda, and Burundi). German colonial ambitions in Nigeria led to an attempt to claim Mahin land, near the Benin River (part of present-day Nigeria) in 1885. After the British objected, Germany agreed to withdraw its claim to Mahin in exchange for territorial concessions to Cameroon westward to consolidate German power there.

While the direct period of German rule in Africa lasted only 34 years, it left a lasting legacy including the looting of cultural artifacts such as Benin Bronzes from Nigeria. German rule reportedly left a trail of destruction. The war against the Hehe people in East Africa (1890-1898) signaled what would come. It was the training ground for a generation of colonial German army officers.

The Germans would apply their merciless skills in other locations. Their mindset was one of extermination, most infamously in the genocide of the Herero and Nama peoples in Namibia (1904-1908), which involved forced marches, concentration camps, starvation, dehydration, abuse, diseases, enslavement, and exhaustion. After years of negotiations, the German government in 2021 agreed to support Namibia with the sum of 1.1 billion euros ($1.28 billion) over the next 30 years. The German government recently said that 1.05 billion euros of the money will be allocated for a reconstruction and development program, while 50 million euros will be used for reconciliation.

However, no money has yet been paid out as talks on implementing the programs have not been concluded. But the government has returned some skulls of Namibian victims so far. There is a growing consensus that Germany must not be allowed to get away with empty statements of ‘’recognition’’ and ‘’regret’’ for crimes of its past. The truth is undeniable: by exterminating and decimating Nigeria’s, and other African countries able-bodied indigenous population, Germany robbed these countries of their opportunity for economic and social development, condemning generations to brutal conditions of survival.

Today’s prosperity of Germany is built on the tragedy of enslaved and exploited African peoples. Its comfort stands on Africa’s bones. The country grew rich, while our peoples were chained to misery. Justice now means reparations, not tomorrow, not theory, but in hard numbers. It is now time to demand full reparations from Germany.

The country should establish a bilateral negotiating group on reparations to pay for its crimes against humanity, comprising the indigenous peoples of Nigeria and other African nations. Not as charity, but as a binding act of justice and a guarantee that such atrocities will never be repeated.

Nigeria’s leadership must kindly raise the issue of reparations negotiation framework with Germany. Tanzania has already secured a formal apology from the German president, Frank- Walter Steinmeier. Namibia is in the final stages of sealing a billion-euro compensation deal. And Nigeria? Silence. Every day of silence from the giant of Africa strengthens Germany’s denial.

On August 14 2025, the German ruling coalition dismissed Africa’s claims for reparations. If Nigeria stays passive, the history German colonial atrocities will be written without us. Silence risks handing Germany an excuse to dismiss future claims, hiding behind the August 14,2025 statement of Germany’s government which bluntly rejects any African demands for reparations.

Reparations are not charity, but debt. A debt Germany owes to the African dead and to the living who carry their scars. It took more than a hundred years for a German government official to acknowledge the country’s colonial actions in Africa. In 2018, the ruling coalition of the conservative block and social Democratic parties agreed to take a fresh look at Germany’s colonial past. That fresh look took a long time in coming, compensating the victims should materialize now as a way of confronting its past moral failures.

Isiaka writes from Maiduguri.