The Trouble With Calling Everyone by Their First Name

There are some mistakes that last only as long as the laughter that follows them. You say the wrong thing at dinner, everybody laughs, you laugh too, and by dessert nobody remembers. Then there are mistakes that happen in front of a microphone. Those are different.

Yesterday, at a graduation ceremony for United Bank for Africa’s Graduate Management Accelerated Programme in Lagos, a young trainee addressed the Bank’s chairman, Tony Elumelu, casually: “Good morning, Tony.” Elumelu stopped her and corrected the form of address, telling her to call him “Mr Elumelu” and adding that he did not subscribe to that kind of “Oyibo life.” The programme had graduated hundreds of young professionals, and the moment, predictably, escaped the room and landed on social media.

Now, as Elumelu completes his 12-year tenure on UBA’s board and retires as chairman today, August 21, the clip has acquired a second life. UBA announced in July that his retirement complied with the 12-year tenure limit for non-executive directors of banks, with Emmanuel N. Nnorom designated as his successor.

But I have watched the argument around that young woman with less interest in deciding whether she was “disrespectful” than in asking a more uncomfortable question:

What exactly are we teaching young people about respect?

Because somewhere between “Good morning, Tony” and “Call me Mr Elumelu,” a much larger Nigerian conversation is taking place. The easy thing is to choose a side.

Some will say the young woman was rude. Some will say she was simply behaving according to modern corporate culture, where hierarchy is supposedly flattened, and everyone from the intern to the managing director is called by the same first name.

Both arguments contain some truth. Neither tells the whole story.

Some workplaces make first names perfectly normal. Some organisations are deliberately designed around informality. Some CEOs insist employees call them by their first names because they believe hierarchy should not interfere with communication. And there are rooms where you should know better.

That graduation hall was not a WhatsApp group. It was not a Friday evening at the office. It was a formal occasion, and the person being addressed was not merely Tony, the man whose name happened to appear on her access card. He was the chairman of the institution before which she was standing.

There is a difference between being familiar with someone and being familiar to someone.

That distinction is disappearing.

I suspect the young woman did not wake up that morning intending to insult Tony Elumelu. I suspect, in fact, that she was trying to do the opposite. Perhaps she had absorbed the language of modern corporate culture –the language of openness, accessibility, informality and first-name relationships. Perhaps somebody had told her that great organisations do not worship hierarchy. Perhaps she thought calling him Tony would make the exchange warmer, more contemporary, more confident.

And then the room taught her something that the handbook probably had not. Culture is not always what the handbook says. Sometimes culture is what the room expects.

That is where young people often get into trouble. We have become very good at teaching intelligence and surprisingly poor at teaching social intelligence.

We tell children to get good grades. We tell them to speak impeccable English. We tell them to learn coding. We tell them to acquire certificates, build CVs, master presentations, learn artificial intelligence and become entrepreneurs before they are old enough to know what entrepreneurship means.

But how many of us teach them how to enter a room? How to greet an elder? How to address a superior? How to disagree without becoming insolent? How to speak to someone who is older than them? How to speak to someone more powerful than them without becoming servile? How to carry themselves when they are nervous? How to recover when they make a mistake?

These things sound small until the microphone gets to you. Then suddenly they become enormous.

Because education does not end with knowing things. Another form of intelligence is knowing when, where, how, and to whom to say them. That is why I find the public punishment of this young woman rather distasteful.

She made a mistake. She was corrected. She appears to have immediately adjusted.

What more do we want?

The internet, however, has never been particularly interested in proportion. A young person makes a social error and suddenly thousands of adults who have spent decades making their own mistakes gather around the person with the enthusiasm of a mob at the gates.

Some of the comments have been unnecessarily vicious. They tell us something about the commenters too.

There is a peculiar Nigerian habit of waiting for somebody to fall before emptying our own frustrations onto the pavement beside them.

A person makes one mistake, and we make them responsible for every grievance we have ever had with their generation. This is how a teachable moment becomes public humiliation, and public humiliation rarely teaches as well as correction does.

Still, another side to this conversation concerns something we should be careful not to lose.

Respect is not the enemy of confidence. We sometimes behave as though the only way to produce confident young Africans is to remove every form of hierarchy from their vocabulary. It is not.

You can be bold and courteous; you can challenge authority without insulting it; you can be modern without becoming culturally tone-deaf. You can work in a global corporation without pretending you have no cultural inheritance, and you can call somebody “Mr Elumelu” without surrendering your dignity.

This is where the “Oyibo life” argument becomes interesting and complicated.

Elumelu is right about one thing: first-name familiarity is not a universal law of civilisation. It is a cultural practice. In many African societies, names, titles and honorifics carry social meaning. But if we are going to make culture our defence, we should be consistent.

We cannot demand elaborate respect from our own people while becoming strangely flattered when foreigners discard the same conventions. We cannot say, “This is Africa; respect our elders,” and then become offended when an African travelling abroad encounters a culture in which nobody cares whether he is a chairman, minister or professor.

Culture is not a costume we put on when it benefits us.

And there is an even more uncomfortable irony. Elumelu himself has been recognised internationally for his work in Africa. In 2020, Belgium conferred on him the Officer of the Order of Leopold, one of the country’s highest national honours, in recognition of his work in economic empowerment and philanthropy.

The historical figure behind that honour was Leopold II, whose rule over the Congo Free State was associated with an extraordinary scale of forced labour, violence and death. Historians have debated the precise demographic toll, but the human catastrophe under Leopold’s Congo regime is beyond serious dispute.

I do not raise this to manufacture some ridiculous contradiction in which receiving a Belgian honour somehow makes a person incapable of defending African customs. It does not. Neither does speaking French make someone French. Neither does wearing a suit make someone European. Neither does accepting an international honour mean surrendering one’s cultural identity.

It is worth remembering, however, that cultural arguments are strongest when applied consistently rather than selectively. The deeper issue, however, is not Tony Elumelu. It is not even the young woman. It is the generation standing behind her.

I have met exceptionally brilliant young Nigerians –hardworking, respectful, curious, ambitious young people who are capable of remarkable things. I have also encountered, occasionally, an unfortunate combination of entitlement, poor communication, excessive familiarity and confidence unsupported by knowledge.

But I hesitate to blame Gen Z for all of it. Every generation produces people who know how to speak and people who merely know how to make noise.

The difference today is that the microphone is everywhere. Your first job interview can be recorded. Your first presentation can be clipped. Your awkward joke can become a headline. Your five-second mistake can become your permanent digital biography.

Which means social intelligence is no longer a decorative virtue but equipment for survival.

The young woman in that room may eventually become a managing director herself. She may sit across a table from a president, negotiate a multimillion-dollar deal, represent Nigeria abroad or stand before a room full of young professionals.

Perhaps one day somebody will call her by the wrong title. Perhaps she will remember this moment, and perhaps she will correct the person without humiliating them. That, to me, would be the best ending to this whole episode.

And we should all remember that courtesy does not diminish dignity.

There was a time when good manners were considered part of education. Perhaps we should return to that unfashionable idea. Because certificates can tell us what a person knows. Manners often tell us what they understand.

And when the microphone gets to you, intelligence may help you find the words. But character decides what you do with them.