‘This is Africa’ — Shaffy Bello's comments on respect resurface after Elumelu name drama

• An old clip of Shaffy Bello discussing respect and age has resurfaced.

• Bello said young people have not “earned the right” to call her by her first name.

• Her comments have resurfaced amid the debate over Tony Elumelu correcting a trainee who called him “Tony.”

An old clip of actress Shaffy Bello speaking on respect and age has resurfaced online, days after a viral video showed UBA Group Chairman Tony Elumelu correcting a young trainee for addressing him by his first name.

In the resurfaced clip, believed to be at least two years old, Bello explains how she responds when children call her by her first name.

"I pull them closer and say, 'You haven't earned the right to call me by name. I have a child as old as you are. Even if I don't have children, you haven't earned the right, and you will never earn that right at your age to call me by name,'" she said.

She went on to question the disappearance of formal greetings among younger people. "Whatever happened to ma'am? Good afternoon, ma'am, and there's something about this 'Hii'; I can't stand it," she said, with reports that she added that even children she has encountered in the United States address her as "Ma'am."

"This is Africa, after all," she said, acknowledging that while most young people can be disrespectful, "there are rude adults out there as well."

The clip has resurfaced as Nigerians debate a separate incident involving Elumelu, who was caught on video correcting a graduate trainee at UBA's Graduate Management Accelerated Programme ceremony after she greeted him with, "Good morning, Tony."

Elumelu told the trainee she would address him as "Mr Elumelu" or "TOE," adding that he does not "subscribe to that kind of oyinbo lifestyle."

The exchange split opinion online, with some Nigerians defending Elumelu's stance on formality and others arguing that first-name address is increasingly normal in modern corporate culture. 

The debate deepened after an old 2022 clip resurfaced showing a Stanford Graduate School of Business student greeting Elumelu with "Hi Tony" during a fireside chat, to a far more relaxed reaction from him at the time.

That contrast fuelled accusations of inconsistency, with a widely shared post questioning why the same address was tolerated in one setting and corrected in another.

Bello's older comments, though unrelated to Elumelu directly, have been pulled back into the conversation as an example of the same generational stance on respect and formal address playing out across Nigerian public life.

Neither Bello nor Elumelu has commented on the other's remarks.

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