By VITUS OZOKE, PhD

At a UBA event, a young Nigerian woman stood up, took the microphone, and said: "Good morning, Tony." Nigeria nearly faced a constitutional crisis. Tony Elumelu stopped her. "Tony?" No. Apparently, not Tony. She was informed that she should address him as "Mr. Elumelu," "TOE," or "Chairman."

And then came the sentence that has launched a thousand Nigerian dissertations on culture: "I don't subscribe to that kind of Oyibo life." Fair enough. Every human being has the right to indicate how they prefer to be addressed. If Tony Elumelu prefers "Mr. Elumelu," nobody should lose sleep over it. If he prefers "Chairman," then Chairman it is. If he prefers TOE, TOE it shall be.

My problem is not with Tony Elumelu's preference. It is with the national morality play Nigerians have manufactured from a young woman's two-word greeting. Suddenly, everybody has become a professor of African culture. "She has no home training!" "She is disrespectful!" "How can she call an elder by his first name?" "Her parents failed!" "African culture does not permit this!"

Easy, tigers!

Before we drag this young woman through the digital village square and publicly flog her for calling a man by the name his parents gave him, I have a few questions. My first question is for Mr. Elumelu himself. Suppose the young woman holding that microphone had been Ayra Starr. "Good morning, Tony." Would the microphone have been cut off immediately? Suppose it had been Rema. "Tony, I have a question." Would the Chairman have interrupted him to hold an emergency seminar on African respect? Suppose it had been Regina Daniels or Angel Unigwe. Would we have witnessed exactly the same correction, delivered with exactly the same firmness, before exactly the same audience?

Let us raise the stakes.

Suppose the young woman had been Temi Otedola, Tolani Otedola, or Florence Otedola – DJ Cuppy. Suppose one of Femi Otedola's daughters casually said: "Good morning, Tony." Would Mr. Elumelu have stopped her in front of hundreds of people and told her she was not permitted to call him Tony? Suppose she were one of Aliko Dangote's daughters. Same question.

And please, spare me the easy answer. Think about it. Somewhere within those hypothetical encounters lies the real subject of this controversy. This may not be about age at all. It may not even be primarily about African culture. It may be about power. It may be about status. It may be about class. It may be about who is permitted familiarity with the powerful and who must announce their inferior station through language.

Before deciding whether "Tony" is disrespectful, Nigerian society should first ask the young woman the question it so often asks without saying it aloud: Who is your father? In Nigeria, remarkably, the cultural meaning of an offense can change once we discover your last name.

I understand the argument about African respect for elders. I grew up in Africa, too. Respect for age is deeply embedded in many African societies. Titles, kinship, seniority, and forms of address matter. But let us stop pretending that what Nigerians practice today is a pristine, coherent, unchanging African culture handed down intact from our ancestors.

Our "culture" has become remarkably flexible when it comes to money and power. The poor elderly man in the village may be seventy-eight, but let a wealthy forty-two-year-old politician arrive, and watch everybody straighten up. Chief! Honorable! His Excellency! Oga! Boss! Chairman! Mentor! The seventy-eight-year-old may even bend over to greet him. So please tell me again about our sacred African reverence for age.

Nigeria has gradually shifted from respect for elders to reverence for status. And those are not the same thing. We increasingly respect wealth, office, access, celebrity, and power – and then baptize that hierarchy as "African culture." That is why I want to know whether the young woman's real transgression was calling an elder "Tony" or whether it was momentarily failing to acknowledge the enormous distance between her social location and his.

There is another problem.

Tony Elumelu has cultivated one of the most deliberately contemporary public images among African billionaires. And good for him. He is stylish, fashion-forward, youthful, and social-media savvy. His photographs routinely project energy, accessibility, sophistication, and modernity. He can do steez. He can do drip. He can do fits. He can look every inch the global billionaire fashionista. Nothing wrong with any of that.

But culture is communication. You cannot spend years communicating Tony – accessible, contemporary, fashionable, cosmopolitan Tony – and then be astonished when a young person encounters the brand you have projected.

There is an African proverb, in various formulations, whose wisdom is essentially this: When a snake stops behaving like a snake and begins playing with children, the children may eventually wear it around their necks. You cannot erase social distance aesthetically and then demand its immediate linguistic restoration. You cannot selectively invoke traditional elderhood whenever someone's familiarity becomes inconvenient. If we are going to invoke African culture, let us invoke the whole thing – not merely the portion that preserves hierarchy.

There is also the wonderfully mundane world of modern professional events. Anybody who has attended enough conferences, workshops, corporate retreats and professional gatherings knows the ritual. You register. Someone hands you a badge. And very often, your first name is printed prominently on it.

Hello, my name is TONY. Not CHAIRMAN CHIEF MR. TONY O. ELUMELU, CFR. Just Tony. In modern professional environments, first names are deliberately used because they reduce unnecessary social distance and facilitate interaction. And Tony Elumelu has surely attended enough international conferences, board meetings, business forums, and networking events to understand this convention.

The young woman's choice did not come from Mars. It came from an increasingly common professional culture in which first-name interaction is ordinary. You may dislike that culture. You may reject it. But calling someone "Tony" in such an environment is hardly evidence that the speaker was raised by wolves.

And then there is the delicious irony of rejecting "Oyibo life" at a modern corporate event, conducted largely in English, inside a banking institution built around contemporary global corporate structures, using microphones, executive titles, management programs, suits, neckties, boardrooms, and all the machinery of modern international capitalism. But apparently the dangerous Western import threatening African civilization is "Good morning, Tony."

This is where cultural arguments become suspiciously selective. We happily import the corporation. We import capitalism. We import banking architecture. We import executive titles. We import Harvard Business School language. We import Western suits. We import MBAs. We import corporate governance. We import social media. We import Instagram branding. But first names? God forbid. Our ancestors must be protected.

Then there is the question of proportion. Nigeria produces approximately one million and one outrages before breakfast. Innocent people die. Institutions fail. Political violence consumes lives. Citizens disappear into the machinery of the state. Young Nigerians graduate into unemployment. Families cannot afford food. Public hospitals fail the sick. Politicians steal fortunes. Elections become warfare. People are detained while lawyers spend years arguing over the legality of what the government has done to them.

Mazi Nnamdi Kanu has spent years entangled in detention, prosecution, imprisonment, and ongoing litigation stemming from a saga that included his illegal rendition from Kenya to Nigeria. Has the formidable moral authority of Nigeria's billionaire class been equally audible on that issue? Has Chairman visited him? Has he publicly demanded that every aspect of his treatment strictly conform to law and justice? Has he used his extraordinary access to Nigeria's political establishment to insist that the state be held to the same standards of proper conduct expected of a young graduate trainee?

Nigeria has recently witnessed deadly political violence in Osun. Where are our emergency lectures on civilization, decorum, and African values when Nigerians are killing Nigerians over political power? Yet someone says: "Good morning, Tony." Emergency! Stop proceedings! Correct this immediately! Apparently, of all the things presently wrong with Nigeria, this was the particular goat that entered the Chairman's farm and ate his yam.

But I reserve my greatest irritation for those Nigerians who are dragging this young woman online. Get a life! Seriously. She called a man by his first name. She did not slap him. She did not insult his mother. She did not curse his ancestors. She did not embezzle UBA's deposits. She did not hack his account. She simply said, "Good morning, Tony."

Even if her choice of address was inappropriate – and reasonable people can certainly believe it was – what exactly warrants the avalanche of abuse? Correct her and move on. Instead, Nigerians have transformed two words into evidence of defective parenting, moral collapse, cultural degeneration, and the impending extinction of African civilization. And predictably, much of the venom is directed at the young woman herself.

I have seen this movie before. When Chiamaka Precious, a young female student at Nnamdi Azikiwe University, became involved in a physical confrontation with a lecturer, social media barely waited for the facts before acting as judge, jury, and executioner. The institution investigated and expelled her with extraordinary speed. Again, the young woman became the object on whom society could demonstrate its commitment to discipline.

There is something worth examining here. Why does Nigerian society seem to derive such satisfaction from publicly disciplining young women? Why does a young woman's mistake so quickly become evidence of poor upbringing? Why are people so eager to identify her parents and indict them? Why must every disagreement involving a young woman become a referendum on her manners, sexuality, upbringing, arrogance, or supposed lack of "home training"? Perhaps misogyny is too uncomfortable a word, but the pattern deserves interrogation.

There is another distinction Nigerians urgently need to understand. Respect is not submission. Respect is not fear. Respect is not social inferiority. And respect certainly does not require the constant verbal announcement of another person's superiority. A genuinely respectful culture creates reciprocal obligations.

The young should respect the old. But the old must protect the young's dignity. The junior should respect the senior. But the senior must not exploit hierarchy to diminish the junior. Employees should respect leaders. But leaders should recognize the enormous power imbalance when they publicly correct junior employees.

A billionaire chairman correcting a graduate trainee before an audience is not an interaction between social equals. One person can absorb the moment and go home. The other may wake the next morning to find her face circulating across Nigeria as strangers debate whether her parents raised her properly.

And that brings me to something far more serious than whether she should have said "Tony." What happens to this young woman now? I genuinely worry about her professional future. This was a young woman at the beginning of her career, standing before one of the most powerful and recognizable figures in African banking. Her supposed offense has now been clipped, circulated, debated, and condemned across Nigerian social media. Her face is attached to it. Her name may be attached to it. And the man who publicly corrected her is not some obscure middle manager the banking industry will have forgotten by Monday morning. He is Chief Tony Elumelu CFR.

That matters.

What happens when she applies for her next banking job? What happens when someone in Human Resources recognizes her from the video? What happens when an interviewer remembers her as "that girl who called Tony Elumelu Tony"? What happens when an otherwise qualified young woman quietly acquires a reputation for being "disrespectful," "arrogant," "poorly brought up," or "not a cultural fit" because of two words uttered into a microphone?

Nobody needs to issue an official blacklist. That is how power often works. A raised eyebrow is enough. A remembered video is enough. A whispered "Isn't she the girl who...?" may be enough.

And this is precisely why powerful people must understand that a public correction from them can carry consequences far beyond the few seconds it takes to deliver. When you occupy Tony Elumelu's position in Nigerian and African banking, your words carry weight. Your displeasure carries weight. Even your facial expression carries weight. A moment that may have ended for him when the microphone moved on could follow that young woman into interview rooms for years.

Perhaps Chairman now has an opportunity to turn this entire controversy into something beautiful. Hire her. Yes, Mr. Elumelu, hire the young woman. If she is otherwise qualified, give her an opportunity at UBA – or within the wider Heirs Holdings ecosystem – and make it unmistakably clear that calling you "Tony" did not destroy her career. What better demonstration of leadership could there be? What better way to show that the correction was genuinely about preferred forms of address, not about punishing a junior person who momentarily breached hierarchy? Imagine the message: She called me Tony. I corrected her. She learned. We moved on. Her future was never at stake. That would be leadership.

Indeed, if this controversy has unintentionally damaged her employability, perhaps the man whose enormous stature helped turn an awkward little exchange into a national conversation is uniquely positioned to ensure that the moment does not become a professional life sentence. Because no young person's career should be destroyed over two words: "Good morning, Tony."

And if we truly believe in African values, perhaps we should remember another: an elder does not merely demand respect from the young; an elder protects the young. Mr. Elumelu now has an extraordinary opportunity to do exactly that. Power changes the ethical burden. The more power you possess, the more gently you should exercise it. That, too, is African culture. Indeed, that is leadership.

The easiest question is: Why did that young woman call an elder Tony Elumelu by his first name? The harder question is: Why are Nigerians so offended when hierarchy is momentarily forgotten? Why does equality make us uncomfortable? Why must status constantly announce itself? Why must Professor be Professor at the airport? Why must Chief remain Chief at dinner? Why must Honorable remain Honorable after leaving office? Why must Chairman be Chairman everywhere? Why must the billionaire's wealth enter the room before his humanity? And why does our supposedly age-based African culture suddenly become so attentive to last names, family connections, and bank balances?

Perhaps this entire controversy is not about a young woman who forgot her manners. Perhaps it is about a society obsessed with rank. A society where the powerful expect not merely respect but acknowledgment of their power. A society where familiarity flows downward but rarely upward. A society where a billionaire may call the young employee whatever he pleases, while the young employee must carefully choose the right verbal architecture to approach the throne.

And perhaps that is why my question remains: If Temi Otedola had said, "Good morning, Tony," what would have happened? If DJ Cuppy had said it? If Dangote's daughter had said it? If Billie Eilish, Olivia Rodrigo, Jude Bellingham, or any internationally famous twenty-something celebrity had said it? Would African culture have suddenly discovered flexibility? Would "Tony" suddenly be harmless? Would everybody laugh? Would Chairman laugh too? I don't know. And neither do those currently crucifying this young woman.

But the fact that the question is even plausible should tell us something. Maybe the most important question in Nigeria is not: "How old is the person you are addressing?" Maybe it is: "Who is your father?" When power determines who may speak familiarly to whom, we should stop calling it respect. When wealth determines how much informality society will tolerate, we should stop calling it culture. And when a young woman's ordinary breach of etiquette provokes more public fury than abuses committed daily by people with titles, wealth, and political connections, we should certainly stop pretending our outrage is about morality.

Call him Mr. Elumelu. Call him TOE. Call him Chairman. By all means, respect people's preferences about how they wish to be addressed. But please spare that young woman the national flogging. And spare the rest of us the lecture about how the survival of African culture depends upon it. Because sometimes, what we ceremoniously call respect for elders is simply deference to power wearing an African wrapper.

•Dr. Vitus Ozoke is a lawyer, human rights activist, and public affairs analyst based in the United States. He writes on politics, governance, and the moral costs of leadership failure in Africa.

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