By Victor Sunday
![](https://thenigerialawyer.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/ELLAN.png")
![](https://thenigerialawyer.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/2026-Summer-IDRI-Masterclass.jpg")
Introduction
Yesterday, 20th August, 2026, a video of businessman Tony Elumelu correcting a young graduate trainee for calling him by his first name became one of the most talked-about clips in Nigerian public life.
However, in the midst of the jokes and the outrage, there is a real legal question: does someone in a position of authority actually have an enforceable right to decide how the people around them address them, and if so, how far can they push that right before it becomes a problem.
It is my contention that the Nigerian labour law does give an employer or superior a plausible basis for that expectation but it also holds that basis to a standard of proportionality and dignity rather than treating it as an entitlement with no limits. It is further postulated that one cannot properly assess any of this without taking Nigerian culture seriously because the whole idea of “respect” and “familiarity” is built on ground that law alone cannot fully explain. Law and culture are not two separate lenses here. They are the same fabric, viewed from different angles.
- What Does the Law Say About Managerial Prerogative?
Nigerian labour law gives an employer a residual right to direct how work gets done and this is generally called managerial prerogative as seen in Mr. Haruna Ishola Salau v. Sterling Bank Plc, Suit No. NICN/ABJ/36/2022. But this right was never meant to be a blank cheque. In Ajayi v. Texaco (Nigeria) Limited (1987) 3 NWLR (Pt. 62) 577 SC, the Supreme Court, dealing with what would justify summary dismissal, defined gross misconduct as conduct serious enough to break down the trust that ought to exist between employer and employee and not merely conduct that simply irritates or displeases. Centrally, that is a question of proportion, and the same logic should run in both directions. Just as an employee’s small lapse cannot justify the harshest response, an employer’s correction of a small lapse, like a mistaken form of address, ought to be measured against how serious that lapse actually was.
Since the Third Alteration to the 1999 Constitution, this question of proportion has had somewhere to be heard. Section 254C(1)(f) of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria 1999 (as amended) gives the National Industrial Court exclusive jurisdiction over anything connected to unfair labour practice or international best practices in labour relations. Nigerian law never quite defines “unfair labour practice” and that gap has let the Court build the concept up through its own case law, mostly by leaning on the standard of decent work found in the ILO Termination of Employment Convention, 1982 (No. 158) and its accompanying Recommendation (No. 166).
As the Court put it in Sulyman Kolawole Bello v. Vixen Enterprises Limited & Anor, the whole point of labour law is to make sure no employer gets away with imposing and no worker is forced to accept conditions that fall below what a given society, at a given time, considers decent.
- The Right to Dignity of the Employee
If managerial prerogative marks the territory of what an employer can direct, the constitutional guarantee of dignity marks the floor beneath which no direction is allowed to fall, no matter how legitimate the underlying reason. Section 34(1) of the 1999 Constitution guarantees every person the dignity of the human person, and the National Industrial Court has repeatedly brought this guarantee into its assessment of employer conduct, even in cases where the employer’s underlying goal was entirely lawful.
Take Linda Jokanola v. Nigeria LNG Limited, Suit No. NICN/LA/261/2013, judgment delivered 10 May 2023 (Esowe J). The claimant challenged her employer’s insistence on a DNA test to verify her maternity leave. The Court did not say that verification itself was off-limits; it said the way the employer went about it was wrongful and unconstitutional, a violation of her right to dignity that amounted to unfair labour practice through the psychological harassment it caused. In other words, having a legitimate reason to act does not give you a free pass on how you act.
Closer still to the facts at hand is Cheick Ouedraogo v. Uber Technologies System Nigeria Limited & 2 Others, Suit No. NICN/LA/424/2020, judgment delivered 13 May 2022 (Nweneka J), where a manager kept calling the claimant “Drogo,” after the fictional character, in a way the Court found condescending and in breach of the employer’s own anti-harassment policy. The Court held that an employee is not a piece of article that can be tossed at will, found the eventual termination wrongful and held the Nigerian subsidiary, its American parent, and the manager personally jointly liable in damages.
Furthermore, read alongside Ejike Maduka v. Microsoft Nigeria Limited & Others, Suit No. NICN/LA/492/2012, judgment delivered 19 December 2013, where both the Nigerian and American entities were held liable simply for staying silent while a country manager’s misconduct went unchecked. Now, a clear pattern of how you address an employee being part of what the relationship actually is emerges and looking the other way when it is abused is itself a legal wrong.
To be fair to Mr. Elumelu, nothing in this event comes close to what was condemned in Ouedraogo or Maduka. A single, calm correction in front of an audience is a long way from repeated mocking nicknames. These cases are not being cited to convict him of anything. They are cited because they show the register, proportionality, dignity, manner, in which conduct like this ought to be weighed under Nigerian law.
- The Sociocultural Factor: We are Africans!
You cannot give a legally serious account of this moment without sitting with the culture it happened inside of. Mr. Elumelu’s own justification was explicitly cultural not just personal preference. He did not simply say he liked formality; he said he did not subscribe to “Oyinbo life,” setting what he saw as Western informality against an inherited Nigerian tradition in which age, achievement, and standing are marked out through titles.
Across Yoruba, Igbo, and Hausa social life, how you address an elder or a titleholder says something about you, not just about them; it is read as a sign of whether you were raised right, not treated as a neutral stylistic choice. Using someone’s bare first name, without being invited to is widely taken not as friendliness but as a gap in upbringing, what one widely shared comment during the controversy bluntly called a lack of “social intelligence”.
Against that sits a second, more recently imported vocabulary, the one that comes with globalized management thinking, where junior staff calling senior leadership by first name is marketed as a sign of psychological safety and modern, approachable leadership. Elumelu’s own public image, built over more than a decade around the initials “TOE” and a very accessible, entrepreneurial persona, sits a little awkwardly inside that second register, even as he leaned on the first to correct the young lady.
This tug between inherited deference and imported informality is not new in Nigerian institutions, but it has rarely played out this publicly. It matters for legal analysis because “reasonableness,” the standard both managerial prerogative and unfair labour practice ultimately rest on, is never a culture-free idea however much law likes to pretend it is.
- Toward a Framework
Four things follow from all this. First, a superior does have a legitimate interest, protected by managerial prerogative, in being addressed in a way that matches their position, and Nigerian cultural expectation backs that interest up.
Second, how that interest gets asserted is a separate question from whether it exists at all, as Jokanola v. Nigeria LNG Limited shows that is, a quiet, private correction is beyond reproach, while a public one edges closer to, without necessarily reaching, the territory mapped out in Ouedraogo and Maduka.
Third, culture is not something you layer on top of the legal test for reasonableness, it is part of what makes the test work at all.
Fourth, and finally, institutions that create ambiguity, through their branding, their training, their leadership style, carry some of the blame when that ambiguity leads to the very confusion their correction then punishes. That is not a legal defense an employee can raise, but it is still a factor worth weighing when judging how proportionate the response was.
- Conclusion
Nigerian labour law already has what it needs, in managerial prerogative, constitutional dignity under section 34(1) of the 1999 Constitution, and unfair labour practice doctrine under section 254C(1)(f), to properly assess a moment like this. What it has not fully done yet, and what this opinion piece has tried to start, is say out loud the cultural work that reasonableness and dignity are already quietly doing every time a Nigerian court, or a Nigerian public, sits in judgment on something like this. A chairman is entitled to ask for the formality his position commands, and Nigerian cultural expectation will mostly back him up on that. Whether he is entitled to insist on it, in public, from a young woman still learning the unwritten rules of a room his own image helped make confusing is a much narrower question and probably one that law, culture, and simple grace are meant to answer together, not apart.
May the Future find us ready.
Victor Sunday is a legal writer, orator and public affairs analyst. He can be reached at victorsundayonwukwe@gmail.com
“Order Justice Omolaye-Ajileye’s Electronic Evidence Books Now” — Essential Guides On Evidence Act, Case Law And Digital Proof
The book also examines Nigeria's legal ecosystem, focusing on the LPELR and NBA AI Guidelines. As a bonus, every purchase comes with a FREE eBook titled: How to Use the AI Features in LegalPedia and LawPavilion.
Ohio Books Ltd praises the publication, stating:
"....this is the only Nigerian book I know of on the topic."
How to Order:
📞 Call, Text, or WhatsApp: 08034917063 | 07055285878
📧 Email: benadigwe1@gmail.com
🌎 Website: www.benadigwe.com
Ebook Version: Access it directly online at https://selar.com/prv626
Authored by Ben Ijeoma Adigwe Esq., ACIarb (UK), LL.M, Dip. in Artificial Intelligence, Director at the Delta State Ministry of Justice, Asaba, Nigeria.
______________________________________________________________________
[A MUST HAVE] Evidence Act Demystified With Recent And Contemporary Cases And Materials
Interested buyers are encouraged to place their orders and enquiries via:
0704 444 4777, 0704 444 4999, 0818 199 9888
Website: www.alexandernigeria.com
