The Tsoede Myth and the Nupe Kinglists: More Political Propaganda?

Abstract

“History is always written by the conquerors.”It is a convention in the writing of Nupe political history to begin with the name ‘Tsoede.’ This convention has been current at least since the early years of colonial rule, when we find ‘Tsoede,’ or ‘Edegi,’ as he is also called, being credited with the founding of the kingdom whose successive rulers can be traced up to the present. The clearest expression of the place of both ‘Tsoede’ and the kinglists which his name heads comes from the standard study of Nupe society by S.F. Nadel, who explains that the earliest history of Nupe centres around the figure of Tsoede or Edegi, the culture hero and mythical founder of the Nupe kingdom. The genealogies of Nupe kings which are preserved in many places in Nupe country and which have also found their way into the earliest written records of Nupe history which were compiled by Mohammedan scholars and court historians, place his birth in the middle of the fifteenth century.It will be our purpose in this paper to explore the evolution of the Tsoede story and to inspect the authority of its authorship. First, let us look at the story offered in Nadel's account: a) At the time of Tsoede's birth Nupe had not been unified under a central government.b) Whatever political forms existed elsewhere in Nupe, Tsoede's homeland Bini was a confederacy of towns. The leading Bini town was Nku, at the confluence of the Kaduna and Niger rivers.The Binis as well as some other Nupe were subordinate to the Attah of Igala.