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By Favour Godwin
The first time I came across the video of the UBA graduate trainee addressing Tony Elumelu with, “Good morning, Tony,” I noticed something beyond the words themselves.
There was the shyness on her face. There was the apparent tension in the exchange. There was also the way Tony Elumelu himself handled the moment.
The incident occurred during the graduation ceremony of UBA’s Graduate Management Accelerated Programme, where the trainee addressed Elumelu as “Tony.” He initially appeared to mishear her, asking, “Toyin? Toyin?” before she clarified. He then told her she should address him as “Mr Elumelu” or “TOE,” adding that he did not subscribe to that kind of “Oyinbo life.” The exchange has since generated a broader debate about workplace etiquette, hierarchy, respect and first-name culture.
Since then, the reactions have largely fallen into two camps.
One side has condemned the young woman. She has been described as disrespectful, socially unintelligent, culturally unintelligent and representative of a generation that no longer understands how to address elders or people in positions of authority.
The other side has questioned whether the first-name address was necessarily an act of disrespect, particularly given the existence of first-name cultures in some modern corporate and professional environments.
I am not interested in taking either side.
I am interested in what the incident reveals about us.
Because perhaps the real question is not simply whether a young Nigerian should call an older person “Tony.”
Perhaps the bigger question is: what happens when the culture we inherit at home collides with the culture we are taught in the workplace and the cultures we continuously consume from the rest of the world?
Nigeria operates, in many ways, within a hybrid cultural system.
We are an African society with deeply rooted expectations around respect, age, hierarchy, greetings and social relationships. Yet we are simultaneously exposed to cultures that operate according to entirely different social conventions.
We consume American and British films. We consume content from India, China and Korea. We work for multinational companies. We interact with foreigners. We use foreign expressions. We adopt foreign workplace practices. We increasingly participate in a globalised social environment.
All of these influence how we think and behave.
And this is where the contradiction begins.
Human behaviour is shaped by both nature and nurture. We may be raised within one cultural environment, but we are subsequently nurtured by several others.
A Nigerian child can be raised to understand that an elder must be greeted differently, addressed respectfully and treated with a certain level of deference.
Depending on the culture and circumstances, that respect may involve prostrating, kneeling, bowing, stretching one’s hands or simply choosing particular words when speaking to an older person.
Then that same person enters a modern corporate environment.
Suddenly, the rules can change.
They may be told that hierarchy should not determine how people interact. They may be encouraged to call colleagues by their first names. They may be taught that an executive should be approachable and that excessive formality can create unnecessary barriers.
And this is not merely a theoretical argument.
The reactions to the Elumelu incident have themselves revealed that first-name culture exists in some Nigerian professional environments. Some people responding to the controversy have pointed to experiences in organisations where employees were encouraged to use first names, arguing that such practices can be part of deliberate efforts to make workplaces less hierarchical. Others have insisted that even in Western corporate environments, context and seniority still matter.
So we are not dealing with one universal rule.
We are dealing with different cultures, different organisations and different contexts.
And that is precisely the problem.
I have encountered organisational settings where employees are deliberately trained to address people who are older or senior to them as “Mr.” or “Mrs.” even when they know their first names.
The intention is clear: to cultivate respect.
But imagine another organisation where employees are deliberately encouraged to address even senior executives by their first names because the organisation considers that more modern, egalitarian and conducive to communication.
Now take a young person trained in the second environment and place that person in the first.
When the person’s behaviour conflicts with the expectations of the new environment, do we simply call that person disrespectful?
Or should we also ask what the person was taught?
This is where I believe our conversation about cultural unintelligence needs to become more sophisticated.
Cultural unintelligence is not merely the failure to know how another culture behaves.
It is also the inability to navigate the interaction between the culture we inherited, the cultures we have absorbed and the environments in which we are expected to function.
And in this regard, the individual is not always the only problem.
Sometimes, the system contributes to the problem.
We cannot continuously expose people to competing cultural expectations without teaching them how to reconcile those expectations, and then act surprised when they get caught between them.
This is not an argument that the young trainee was necessarily right.
There are cultural contexts in which addressing an older person by their first name would reasonably be considered inappropriate. And in this particular case, the setting was a formal UBA graduation event, while Elumelu had made his preferred form of address clear. Cultural awareness matters. Context matters. Social intelligence matters.
But if we are going to demand cultural intelligence from the individual, we must also examine the cultural intelligence of the institutions shaping that individual.
What exactly are we training our people to understand?
Are we training them to abandon our cultural values in favour of imported corporate practices?
Are we training them to preserve traditional values regardless of the environment?
Or are we teaching them how to distinguish between contexts and navigate both worlds intelligently?
That distinction matters.
Because respect itself should not be reduced entirely to a title.
A person can say “Good morning, sir” and still speak with contempt.
A person can use every appropriate title and still treat another human being poorly.
Conversely, someone can use a first name without necessarily intending disrespect.
This does not make titles meaningless. Titles carry cultural meaning, and in many Nigerian contexts, they are important markers of respect.
But respect is bigger than vocabulary.
It is expressed through tone, conduct, attitude, awareness and context.
Interestingly, an older video that resurfaced amid this controversy showed a Stanford Graduate School of Business student addressing Elumelu as “Tony” during a fireside chat. The interaction appeared to take place within the first-name culture of that particular academic setting. I do not cite this to suggest that Elumelu generally prefers to be called “Tony”; rather, it demonstrates something important: the same form of address can carry different meanings in different contexts.
And that brings me to another uncomfortable part of this conversation: whose culture are we expected to understand?
Nigerians travelling abroad are routinely encouraged to develop cultural intelligence.
Understand their customs.
Respect their social norms.
Do not impose your culture.
Adapt to the environment.
And there is nothing wrong with that advice.
But do we demand the same reciprocity when people from those societies enter ours?
When a foreigner comes to Nigeria, do we expect that person to understand why greetings matter so much to us? Why age can influence how one interacts with another person? Why certain titles matter? Why particular gestures carry meaning?
Or have we unconsciously accepted that cultural intelligence is something Africans must develop primarily to navigate the cultures of others?
I am not arguing that foreigners should be forced to adopt every Nigerian practice.
That would be absurd.
I am asking a question of reciprocity.
If adapting to another society is a mark of cultural intelligence when Nigerians travel abroad, should understanding the social context of the society one enters not also be part of cultural intelligence?
And this is where the issue becomes bigger than one graduate trainee.
There is a danger in constantly teaching ourselves that being globally intelligent means being increasingly detached from our own cultural identity.
We learn how others speak.
We learn how they greet.
We learn how their workplaces operate.
We learn what is acceptable in their societies.
We are encouraged to adapt.
But how often do we ask ourselves how to elevate our own culture so that it is not merely something Africans are expected to preserve privately while abandoning publicly?
How do we build institutions that are modern without making our cultural identity appear primitive?
How do we embrace global professional standards without treating everything indigenous as backward?
How do we become globally competent without becoming culturally insecure?
These are questions worth asking.
Because cultural evolution is inevitable.
Our societies will change. Our workplaces will change. The way we communicate will change. Young people will inevitably behave differently from previous generations.
But evolution should not necessarily mean cultural erasure.
There should be room for modernity without cultural amnesia.
There should be room for professionalism without the abandonment of respect.
There should be room for first-name relationships in appropriate contexts without declaring traditional forms of respect obsolete.
And there should also be room for traditional values without forcing every modern institution to reproduce every traditional practice.
The responsibility, therefore, cannot always be placed on the individual.
Organisations have a responsibility to communicate their expectations clearly.
Families have a responsibility to transmit values.
Educational institutions have a responsibility to prepare people for diverse environments.
And society has a responsibility to define what it means to be culturally intelligent in a country that is increasingly globalised.
Because if we fail to do that, we will continue to produce people who are simultaneously being told:
“Respect your elders.”
And:
“Don’t let hierarchy define how you relate with people.”
We will tell them to preserve their culture while training them in environments that sometimes reward behaviours borrowed from elsewhere.
Then, when the two worlds collide, we will blame the individual for the contradiction we collectively created.
Perhaps that is what makes the “Good morning, Tony” incident worth discussing.
It is not really about one word.
It is about the cultural crossroads at which many young Nigerians now find themselves.
A generation is growing up between inherited African values and an increasingly globalised social and professional environment.
The answer cannot be to simply condemn the generation.
Neither should the answer be to abandon our cultural values in the name of modernity.
The answer is to teach people how to navigate both worlds.
And perhaps we should go even further.
Cultural intelligence should not mean that one culture is always expected to bend while another remains standing.
If we expect Nigerians to respect the cultures they encounter abroad, then we should also have enough confidence in our own culture to expect those who enter our society to understand that they, too, have entered a society with its own values, history and expectations.
That is not cultural arrogance.
That is cultural confidence.
The real question, therefore, is not simply whether the young woman was culturally unintelligent.
Perhaps we should also ask whether we, as a society, have been culturally intelligent enough in training her.
Because sometimes the person we blame for the cultural contradiction is merely the person standing where two cultures collide.
Favour Godwin is a broadcast journalist. He writes via iamfavourgodwin@outlook.com or 09023644385.
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