UBA first-name controversy exposes Nigeria's imported workplace culture gap
A young UBA trainee addressing Chairman Tony Elumelu cle his first name sparked debate about Nigerian respect culture versus corporate informality. The incident exposed tension between UBA's decades-old first-name policy and societal expectations of elder deference, with some calling it disrespectful while others note she followed company rules.
The deeper issue, argues Premium Times columnist Temitope Lakisokun, is Nigeria's habit of importing Western institutional ideas—like corporate first-name culture from 80s/90s American business schools—without examining their social foundations. As the original contemporaries became elders and younger generations joined workplaces, the borrowed convention created awkwardness when chairmen old enough to be interns' grandfathers are called by first name.
Using GK Chesterton's fence analogy, Lakisokun warns against discarding conventions without understanding their purpose. The real lesson isn't that youth must fear elders, but that modernity requires knowing why social rules existed before changing them. Respect and equality can coexist, just as warmth and formality do—we need not become "oyinbo" to be modern.
Will this debate prompt Nigerian companies to reexamine imported workplace cultures against local social realities, or will informality persist as unexamined performative modernity?