Tourists apologise on behalf of white ancestors over slavery in Africa

Juan Ignacio, a historian from Argentina, has apologised on behalf of the whites for the role of their ancestors in slavery in Africa. He disclosed this on Friday on a tour to Badagry with his team of four members from Europe and Asia.

After listening to curators in various slave relic sites in Badagry, he said what his ancestors did was very painful and that he was sorry and hoped it would not repeat itself.

“As a white man, it’s very painful what our ancestors did to the Africans. It is to cry and say sorry and try not to repeat it as slavery can be like the holocaust.”

He added that there is a need for government interventions to improve Badagry’s tourism sector, suggesting that experts be employed to redesign the site and educate the tour guides to standards that can be compared to tourist sites in other countries in West Africa.

“To achieve this, you need scientific expertise to recreate the sites and educate the curators to professionalise these places, which requires huge amounts of work that the government should do. But sometimes the government is not interested because the museums are for some people and not for the majority, and the money made there does not go to the government purse.

“In Europe, you have museums everywhere, and they are well-developed museums. The site has to be developed to attract more tourists, and good salaries must be paid to the curators.

“If you compare the Badagry slave museums to those of the Benin Republic and Ghana, you discover that Badagry museums are not rich enough and are difficult to compare. Nevertheless, the way they tell their stories and how the relics are arranged, I think it good,” he said

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