Sometimes a nation’s cultural argument hides inside a sentence as ordinary as “Good morning, Tony.”
That was all it took for a young graduate trainee at the United Bank for Africa’s Graduate Management Accelerated Programme graduation ceremony in Lagos to find herself at the centre of a national argument about respect, corporate culture, Western influence and the changing language of authority.
She addressed Tony Elumelu by his first name. He stopped her and told her she should call him “Mr Elumelu” or “TOE”, adding that he did not subscribe to that kind of “Oyinbo life.” She immediately corrected herself and continued with her question.
The social media court has since delivered its verdict. Some have condemned the young woman as disrespectful and badly brought up. Others have defended her as a product of a modern corporate culture in which first names are supposedly encouraged.
Both sides have missed the larger point.
The real issue is not whether Tony Elumelu deserves respect. Of course he does. Nor is it whether Nigerian culture attaches importance to age, position and seniority. It does, and there is nothing inherently backward about courtesy to elders and people occupying positions of responsibility.
The more interesting question is this: what happens when a corporate culture teaches informality, but the culture of the society outside the workplace still demands deference?
That is where the Elumelu episode becomes instructive.
There have been public accounts from former UBA personnel that first name address forms part of the culture associated with the bank’s Graduate Management Accelerated Programme. One former participant has specifically said that trainees were accustomed to addressing colleagues, including senior executives, by their first names. That account has circulated publicly, although UBA itself has not, to my knowledge, published a formal rule establishing that every employee may address the Group Chairman by his first name.
That distinction matters.
We should not manufacture a corporate policy where there is no publicly available document establishing one. But neither should we pretend that the young woman invented the informality from nowhere.
There is evidence that the culture of first name familiarity is not alien to Elumelu himself. In a 2022 Stanford Graduate School of Business programme, MBA student Chisom Obi Okoye opened an interview with him by saying, “Hi, Tony.” The official Stanford transcript records the exchange, and Elumelu did not object.
That does not make his reaction in Lagos hypocritical. Context matters. A Stanford academic programme and a Nigerian corporate graduation ceremony are not identical settings. People are entitled to different preferences in different environments.
But it does expose a cultural contradiction worth examining.
Why should a young Nigerian professional be expected to instinctively know that “Tony” is perfectly acceptable in one institutional environment but unacceptable in another, particularly if the professional culture around her has encouraged first name familiarity?
That is where leadership comes in.
Corporate culture is not created by junior employees. It is designed and transmitted from the top.
If an organisation wants to flatten hierarchy, it must explain the limits of that flattening. If it wants first names across the organisation, it should make clear whether there are exceptions. If the Chairman is the exception, the exception should not be left for a young trainee to discover publicly, under the glare of cameras.
But there is another side to this argument which deserves equal attention.
Nigeria should not be so fascinated by everything imported from Western corporate culture that we begin to regard our own traditions of courtesy as embarrassing relics. The habit of addressing elders and people in positions of responsibility with “Sir”, “Ma”, “Mr”, “Chief”, “Dr” or other appropriate forms is not necessarily evidence of an inferiority complex. In many Nigerian settings, it is simply good manners.
There is wisdom in that tradition.
The danger begins when we confuse informality with equality, or titles with respect. A person can call another “Sir” and treat him abominably. Another can call his superior by his first name and remain exceptionally courteous, competent and loyal.
Respect is ultimately demonstrated by conduct.
But culture is also communicated through language. The words we use to address one another tell us something about how a society understands age, authority and social distance. When those conventions change, the consequences do not remain inside the office.
That is why the corporate sector must be careful about what it teaches.
The modern Nigerian workplace has borrowed heavily from Western management culture. We have imported open offices, first name relationships, casual communication, flatter hierarchies and the language of colleagueship. Much of this has value. It can make organisations less intimidating and allow younger employees to speak more freely.
But culture is not a buffet from which we select only what suits us.
If we deliberately weaken traditional hierarchies inside the workplace, we should not be surprised when the younger generation carries some of that informality into other settings.
This is where the people now shouting loudest about “home training” should pause.
Some of them have spent years celebrating corporate cultures that deliberately dismantle the very conventions of deference they now demand from young people. They cannot encourage a generation to behave like modern global professionals and then suddenly insist that the same generation must instinctively know every unwritten rule of traditional Nigerian hierarchy.
There is a lesson here for both sides.
The young graduate should learn that context matters. A formal national or corporate ceremony may call for a different form of address from an informal office conversation. Courtesy costs nothing.
But corporate leaders must also understand that when you build a culture, you own its consequences.
If a trainee has absorbed a practice encouraged by her professional environment, correcting her is legitimate. Publicly humiliating her is another matter. She corrected herself. She moved on. That should have been the end of it.
The irony is that Elumelu’s own tenure as UBA Group Chairman formally ended on August 21, just a day after the ceremony, following the completion of the 12 year tenure limit prescribed for non executive bank directors. UBA had already announced Emmanuel Nnorom as his successor.
So perhaps this little episode offers an unintended closing lesson from twelve years of corporate leadership.
Institutions eventually outlive their founders and leaders. Cultures do too.
The real measure of leadership is therefore not whether people know what to call the man at the top. It is whether the institution has taught them clearly enough to understand the values it expects them to carry.
“Good morning, Tony” was a small mistake, if indeed it was a mistake.
But the larger question it has exposed is anything but small.
Are we building a Nigerian corporate culture that knows how to modernise without becoming culturally disoriented?
Perhaps the answer is neither “Tony” nor “Mr Elumelu” alone.
Perhaps the answer is knowing when each is appropriate, and having the wisdom to teach the difference before placing a young professional before a microphone.
Ogundipe is a Public Affairs Analyst, former President of Nigeria and Africa Union of Journalists writes from Abuja
