Following recent successful negotiations with several museums in the UK for the return of looted artefacts, the Nigerian government are now believed to be in the advanced stages of talks to secure the return of Victorian missionary, Jacob Rees-Mogg.
Rees-Mogg, who is estimated to be over two hundred years old, disappeared from his mission station in a jungle clearing close to the capital, Abuja, in 1847.
Initially, it was thought that the Roman Catholic member of the White Fathers evangelical order had been killed by native tribesmen and possibly eaten, but he then re-emerged in the Horniman Museum in South London where he remained on display in a glass cabinet for almost half a century, kept alive on a diet of hard tack biscuits, acorn gruel and holy water
In the 1960s, a deal was struck with the Rees-Mogg family who took him back to the family home in Somerset where he enjoyed a brief career as a performer in a local music hall, singing sea shanties and Victorian love ditties in a high falsetto while riding back and forth across the stage on a penny-farthing bicycle.
He then entered politics and became the Conservative member for East Somerset and more recently the Minister For Brexit Opportunities.
After failing to find any, he asked to be returned to the museum where he remains in the basement, awaiting restoration work on his knees and monocle.
A museum spokesman told newsmen last night: 'We realise that Jacob may have been looted so we are very much open to returning him to Nigeria.
'Let them pay for his kedgeree breakfasts and monthly subscription to Mature Nannies In Suspenders.'
In 1947, the museum successfully fought off an action to return Ann Widdecombe to the United States after they claimed she had been looted from The House of Grotesques on Coney Island by drunken matelots from HMS Bulwark in 1870.
Image: amazing_photos | Pixabay
First published 30 Nov 2022
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