At the graduation ceremony of United Bank for Africa’s Graduate Management Accelerated Programme, two young trainees each had a moment with the group’s chairman, Tony Elumelu. The same programme, the same chairman — and two encounters that could not have ended more differently.
The first has been replayed millions of times. A trainee rose to speak and opened with “Good morning, Tony.” Elumelu stopped her; when she repeated it, he made clear he preferred “Mr Elumelu” or “TOE,” adding that he did not subscribe to “that kind of Oyinbo life.” Within hours it had become a national argument about Gen Z, workplace etiquette, and African values.
The second moment deserves at least as much attention, but has received far less. During her on-the-job training, another trainee, Deborah Moses, had noticed something: customers kept arriving at branches to resolve issues without the documents required, were asked to return, and left frustrated. She did not just witness it — she studied it, and proposed a solution: a guide that tells customers exactly what each request requires, paired with better tracking of recurring complaints. When she shared it, the chairman invited her forward and, by her account, offered encouragement and a recommendation.
One said, “Good morning, Tony” and it became a debate about respect. Another spotted a customer problem and caught the chairman’s eye. Beneath the clips is a bigger conversation — about preparation, contextual intelligence, and whether culture really flows from the top.
It would be easy to file these away as “the rude one” and “the brilliant one.” That is far too simple — and it misses the real lesson for every young professional watching.
The Difference Was Environmental Scanning
The gap between the two encounters was not manners versus intelligence. It was environmental scanning — the discipline of seeing beyond the task in front of you. We usually reserve that phrase for boardroom strategy: competitors, regulation, technology, market trends. But it matters just as much at the level of a single career.
Deborah could have done exactly what she was asked — report, serve customers, follow procedure, graduate. Nothing would have been wrong with that. Instead, while doing the job, she was quietly asking a second question: what am I seeing here that could work better? The employee who understands only the job description knows what to do. The employee who understands customers, colleagues, leadership priorities and the organisation’s weak points begins to understand why the job exists.
She was thinking like management before anyone handed her the title — so when a microphone and a chairman appeared, she had something real to say. Preparation met opportunity.
But Spare a Thought for the Other Trainee
Here we should be careful and kind. It would be unfair to turn a few seconds of video into a verdict on a young person’s upbringing or character, and I will not name her, because she did not ask to become a national talking point.
Her stumble, if it even deserves the word, was one of contextual intelligence — reading a room’s unwritten rules: who is present, how people address one another, how this particular leader prefers to be addressed. That is a real professional skill, and a fair rule of thumb is that when in doubt, especially with someone older or more senior, starting formally costs nothing.
Familiarity can always follow.
But there is another side to this, and it points upward, not down. Employees should not have to be mind readers. First-name informality has existed in Nigerian banking for decades — including, by many accounts, in the institutions where Elumelu himself came up. If an organisation encourages informality everywhere until you reach the chairman, then that exception is precisely the kind of unwritten rule a 22-year-old cannot be expected to intuit.
When the Culture on the Wall Meets the Culture in the Room
This is where UBA — and frankly every large organisation — might reflect. Companies say they take culture seriously; they speak of one people, one tribe, of employees who should feel free to speak up and contribute ideas. Those are admirable words. But culture is not what hangs on the wall. Culture is what happens when the most powerful person walks into the room.
There is nothing wrong with hierarchy. There is something wrong with invisible hierarchy. If “Tony” quietly becomes “Mr Elumelu” at a certain level, say so. You cannot tell people, “We are all one tribe,” model accessibility at every other rung, and then expect the newest trainee to sense exactly where the unwritten exception begins. Culture is supposed to help employees navigate an organisation. It should never ambush them. That means culture has to be top-down as much as bottom-up — the behaviour expected of the newest graduate should match the culture demonstrated by the most senior person in the building.
And Perhaps “Oyinbo Life” Isn’t Quite the Point
One more thread is worth pulling. Elumelu’s rejection of “Oyinbo life” resonated because it touched a genuine worry: in rushing to look global, are we discarding parts of ourselves we should keep? A fair question. But the irony is that deference to age and seniority is not distinctly African at all. In parts of the United States, addressing an elder or a senior by first name uninvited is still considered improper. The most famous example is Maya Angelou, who once, on live television, gently corrected a young woman who called her “Maya” — she preferred “Miss Angelou.” An African-American icon, in America, defending almost exactly the principle we now assume we must abandon to be modern.
Africa does not need to become less African to become more global. Globalisation should expose us to other cultures, not require us to erase our own. There is nothing backward about respecting age, nothing primitive about honouring accomplishment. And yet respect was never meant to travel in one direction only. The elder deserves respect; the younger person deserves dignity. The employee should respect leadership; leadership should build a space where people can question, propose, and occasionally get it wrong without fear. The goal is neither Silicon Valley informality nor corporate feudalism — it is an organisation confident enough to say: these are our values, and here is how they apply, from the chairman to the newest trainee.
The Chairman Read the Room Too
A final twist has complicated the debate. At Stanford, Elumelu was reportedly greeted by a Nigerian student with “Hi, Tony” — and did not correct her. Critics called it a double standard.
But there is a more generous reading, and it happens to be the whole lesson: he read the room. Stanford is not UBA headquarters; a guest in an American university adapts to its conventions. Which is exactly the skill we are asking of the trainee — read the room, understand the culture, know when to adapt without losing yourself. If we demand that of a graduate, we should demand it even more of leaders and institutions.
Three Lessons Worth Keeping
First, never merely occupy your position — observe it. Problems hide inside routine. The person who spots them and proposes a fix begins to stand apart.
Second, build contextual intelligence.
Competence is not enough. Learn to read people, power, and culture — when to speak, how, and what matters to those making decisions.
Third, organisations must practise the culture they preach. If respect matters, define it. If informality matters, model it. If people should speak up, make it safe. And if there are exceptions, communicate them — don’t let culture ambush the people it should be guiding.
One encounter became a debate about how to address the chairman. The other became a conversation about how to improve the bank.
Don’t wait for a bigger position before you start seeing the bigger picture — and don’t ask young employees to read a culture your leaders keep rewriting.
Afolabi Abiodun — Entrepreneur | EdTech Professional | Information Security Expert | PhD Candidate
Join BusinessDay whatsapp Channel, to stay up to date
Open In Whatsapp
Follow the story
