Nigerian Social Etiquette: Greetings, Dress Code, and Navigating Cultural Norms
By Tunde Adebayo My first week in Lagos, I committed what I later learned was a minor cultural sin. I walked into a colleague's office, nodded briskly, and launched straight into the work question I needed answered. He answered me politely enough, but something felt off. The warmth I'd experienced from him previously had cooled. It took me months to understand what I'd done wrong. I'd skipped the greeting—that essential Nigerian ritual that precedes any meaningful interaction. I'd treated a person as a function, not as a human being deserving of acknowledgment. In Nigeria, that's not just rushed; it's vaguely insulting. Nigerian social etiquette operates on different assumptions than what most expats are used to. Relationships come before transactions. Elders command automatic respect. Greetings aren't optional preliminaries—they're the main event. And if you get it wrong, people are generally too polite to tell you. They just quietly decide yo...