Tony Elumelu
The awkwardness lies in the system itself: a borrowed convention that was designed to soften hierarchy but was never properly reconsidered as the generations changed… The lesson is not that young Nigerians must learn to fear their elders. It is that modernity does not require us to forget why certain social conventions existed in the first place. We are not “oyinbo.”.. Respect can coexist with equality just as much as warmth can coexist with formality.
The argument over the young trainee who addressed UBA Chairman Tony Elumelu by his first name has become a surprisingly revealing debate about Nigerian society.
One side says she was disrespectful. The other says she did nothing wrong: UBA has a first-name culture, and she followed it.
I think both sides are looking at the wrong thing.
