Mindset is the quantum of a man’s total psychology. It controls the man’s thinking, planning and actions. It is his mindset that utmostly determines his total behaviour. Whether it is coming from his conscious or sub-conscious mind, a man’s mindset is the ultimate determinant of a man’s success or failure.
There was a case of this powerful Emperor in the small Island of Okikko in the Central African Republic. Behold, he was a very distant nephew of Emperor Bukassa.
From birth, this young Emperor showed evidence of becoming a powerful Emperor in his country and behold in his empire. From childhood, he thought of acquiring power, using power and controlling power itself.
Although his school career is fraught with a lot of inaccuracies and distortion, at least he could be regarded as educated man. Unfortunately, due to his penchant to be anything and do everything, it was not possible for him to be an expert in one identified discipline. People said that he was a lawyer, a teacher, a historian, a linguist in the local dialects, a politician and perhaps also a business manager and all and all an architect. All these disciplines, he could claim significant knowledge if only tenuously.
His greatest short coming was that he was too opinionated to a fault. Never, absolutely never did he believe that standing by side with any man; he must claim superiority over such a man in every aspect of human knowledge. For this reason, in every conversation, he must talk faster than anybody; in every discussion he must claim knowledge of every matter whether in music, architecture, biology, medicine or even in care disciplines such as dentistry. It was for this reason that he was called Emperor Wisdom. This invariably scared those when he reluctantly selected to work with him and for him.
He took fun and pleasure in ridiculing persons and individuals even in the public because, he must demonstrate at any given time that he was the Emperor yet, he did not care how things were moving in his empire.
Thus, in his unrelenting seal to capture power and to use power, he entered into series of arrangements with some City Mayors to support him in his bid, promising to cede some political powers to them once he captured the position as the Emperor of Okikko.
The penchant of Emperor Okikko did not start at his adult age. While he was in the school at every level, he could contest for every position. Class prefect, school prefect, house prefect, group leader, etc. Even in his community where he grew up before he relocated to an urban city, he would contest for every type of leadership position even including that of village hunting body scouts.
So, using his sweet tongue to convince all the City Mayors to support his bid to over throw the Former Emperor through a democratic election, they acquiesced. The election was full of conflicts, controversies, contradictions and other mal-practices. He used every known and unknown tactics to woo voters, including joining village and city boys to sweep village roads, sitting at a newspaper vendor’s spot to read newspapers, helping a suyar maker to roast his wares, going to some worshipping places to worship and in fact including entering into both small and large markets just for showmanship to prove himself as a populist Emperor.
In fact, although few of the City Mayors were skeptical of him and his styles, the electorate were easily gullible to his antics and they fell prey to his superfluous display of real “socialist characteristics” which invariably appealed to the electorate who were mostly downtrodden and credulous. In the end, he was declared the winner over the Former Emperor Humchan a very popular and beloved Emperor who lost grip of his people because of unguided utterances. This made him to loose the support of both the ecclesiastical high and clerical and Christian adherents because the Empire of Okikko was highly religious and knitted together.
Before the Emperor Kikito was sworn in, he began to behave as if he was already the Emperor renaming some streets in the Empire, relocating some major Institutions; freezing the accounts of the government etc. indeed he was over enthusiastic because after nearly two decades of pursuing a ruling power, he never knew it would come his way in life. So, when it came, he was overwhelmed and baffled to his own bewilderment.
Now with him standing on top of power, power in his hand and power all over him, he was indeed on top of the world. He began to insult people including some of those Mayors, calling them all sorts of names, even threatening to banish them. His reckless style of leadership included award of contracts to both qualified and non-qualified contractors, in some instances, contracts for the building of public institutions were even given to some classroom teachers to handle and they messed him up. His generosity and humanitarian tendencies turned out to mean a highly crafted ploy to hoodwink both the wise, the stupid and the fools among the citizenry.
But one thing must be said of him, he was a very intelligent and crafty person. Indeed he is what some Western nationals would call, “a smart guy”, because, the more he vibrated in action and words, the more the people of Okikko were mesmerized. Some referred to him as a man with magic wands; others said that he was a mystery man, while many strongly believed that he was a highly gifted jolly old fellow.
Unfortunately, the people who had started tolerating him and his style of leadership of “the more you look, the more you see, and the less you look, the more you see,” began to accept him. Suddenly, one morning, he told the citizens that their only problem would be to find somebody to replace him as the Emperor because, many believed that he was gunning for the post of the Mayor General of Isosso which was a lager territory containing ten other Emperors to whom those Emperors serve.
From then on, he moved fast in order to garner support for this type of mad ambition because there were other more senior Emperors. Three months only, he reached a sudden dead alley where it must be impossible for him to make a head way. He was in a fist to be or not to be.
He made a sudden U-turn, telling his citizens, that “I have not finished my transiting programmes to make the people of Okikko better and better. So, I will continue for another six years to see if I can complete my agenda, lest I will continue as long as the people want me.”
Certainly, in a city gathering of elders, they began to discuss of his confusion saying that he was greedy of power, intoxicated with power and stocked with power.
Could it be that Emperor Kikito knew or did not know what he wanted for his people and for himself? As discussion on this was rife, he began to recruit Lieutenants with whom he has to take round of his usual castigating and insulting cabinet meetings for which he presided over as a class room teacher. The way he was going, people have begun to speculate that if the post of Secretary General of the United Nations becomes vacant, he may even put himself forward because he was all-knowing Emperor. Soon, he would not know that it does not work out that way all the times. More unfortunately, nobody can tell him this because all his advisers are just for mere paper appointment just to provide jobs for the boys and men. Because, he did not take advice from anybody even if such a person was the son of Aristotle or had the Wisdom of Solomon. He never cared and that would probably create him problem in future. But the real problem is whether he would realize that. Time will tell as Nigeria turns.
