Ndaduma, 'Father Niger', is the personified River Niger of the Nupe, whose homeland lies along the great river (called Edu in everyday Nupe speech) and its confluence with the Kaduna. The river was venerated as a divinity of the annual flood, and its worship at the old royal towns of Gbara and Jima persisted long after the formal Islamization of Nupeland, when imams and qadis had already been appointed there. The river's course is also remembered as the path along which the culture hero Tsoede travelled by bronze canoe from Idah to unite the Nupe into a kingdom, and in the late twentieth century the name Ndaduma was taken up by the movement for a Nupe homeland state, showing the river-father's enduring place in Nupe identity.