THE KEDE: A RIVERAIN STATE IN NORTHERN NIGERIA 167
political boundaries, came to lie in three different provinces and six different (modern) Emirates or Divisions.1 However, we shall see later that this distribution of a comparatively small group over so many political divisions is not due entirely to the realignment of political boundaries. It is also a result of movements of Kede groups in recent times, after the political boundaries had been fixed by the present Government.
By far the largest section of the Kede lives on the left bank of the Niger and Kaduna, in Bida Emirate. In this area the Kede have also maintained their political status of a separate political unit, with their own chief as the administrative head. In all other areas the Kede communities are absorbed politically in the districts on whose territory they lie, and live under the local, non-Kede chiefs and district heads.2 The modern political situation has not, however, obliterated the other features of their social life; the characteristics of their political organization, more specially, live on, though on a smaller scale, in the one area where it has been given official recognition. Although many of our political data will of necessity be derived from this one area, we may again take them to be representative of Kede country at large, and when speaking in the following of Kede, Kede culture and social system, we shall mean the group as a whole, disregarding the modern political subdivisions.
There exists, however, one subdivision of a different nature, deep-seated and of old standing, which we may not ignore. I have spoken so far simply of the Kede. But there exist in reality two Kede groups: the Kede Tifin, or upper-stream Kede, and the Kede Tako, or down-stream Kede, the boundary between the two groups lying roughly at Jebba Island (the two groups overlap for a short stretch north and south of Jebba).3 Now, what I have said about the specific features of the Kede social and political system applies only to the down-stream group. The upper-stream Kede show none of the traits which give to the culture of the sister group
1 The Kede on the right bank of the Niger belong now to Harm and Kabba Provinces, and to the Emirates, or political divisions, of Ilorin, Lafiagi, Patigi, and (in the south-west corner) Koton-Karifi. The Kede on the left bank of the Niger and on the River Kaduna belong to Niger Province (formerly Nupe Province) and to the Emirates of Bida, Agaie-Lapai, and Kontagora.
2 In one place (Ogudu) a certain compromise has been effected, the head of the fairly numerous Kede community acting as a titled 'second-in-command* to the village chief.
3 The upper-stream Kede are also called Kede Gbede, after the Nupe sub-tribe (Gbede or Gbedegi) with which they share their territory.