The Etiquette Place launches iFinesse Project April 10 to revive values, national pride

By Godwin Okondo

THE Etiquette Place, a corporate finishing school renowned for its work in executive intelligence and professional behaviour, is set to inaugurate the iFinesse Project on April 10, 2025, at the Protea Hotel by Marriott, Alausa, Ikeja. The event, scheduled for 12:00pm, will be graced by the Deputy Governor Mr. Quadri Obafemi Hamzat and the First Lady of Lagos State Dr. Ibijoke Sanwo-Olu, and will serve as a platform to formally express the iFinesse mandate to stakeholders and attract corporate sponsorship for the initiative.

The iFinesse Project, founded by the Lead Consultant at The Etiquette Place Yvonne Ebbi is a value-driven initiative aimed at reviving Nigeria’s national pride and addressing the decline in values among young people. It seeks to instil a culture of empathy, courtesy and respect in school children, college students and institutions across the country. Since its inception in 2010, The Etiquette Place has trained thousands of executives in savoir-faire, poise and panache, using its flagship ‘Best Foot Programme’ to align personal brands with corporate identities. Through this, the organisation has helped to build a socially intelligent workforce and a community of refined professionals. Ebbi explained that The Etiquette Place has consistently upheld the quote by Clarence Thomas: “Good manners will open doors that the best education cannot!”

Inspired by a personal experience in 2018 after addressing thousands of youths at the NNPC Towers as keynote speaker at the Healthy Lifestyle Programme, and further experiences during the Flair Summer Programmes, Ebbi identified a widespread “attitude gap” among Nigerian youth, stemming from a decline in values and a resulting identity crisis. She noted that many young people suffer from low self-esteem and inferiority complexes, exacerbated by media portrayals that position the West as superior and diminish the image of Black people.

According to Ebbi, the result of this narrative has led to an unconscious rejection of African identity, with many young Nigerians seeking validation abroad and adopting foreign ideals at the expense of their natural and African heritage. She cited the rise in cosmetic alterations and the widespread desire for Eurocentric features as examples of this crisis. Referring to the trend of mass emigration, she recalled reports suggesting the UK embassy once received 10,000 applications from Nigerians daily, illustrating the scale of the identity distortion.

Yvonne Ebbi’s My Little Book of Etiquette being given to Ojodu Primary School 3… in Lagos

Quoting from her first book, Reminisce, Ebbi said, “We say ‘Dark and Lovely,’ but we ‘THINK Black and Ugly’,” adding that the national mindset has fuelled brain-drain and led many young Nigerians to their deaths in the pursuit of an illusory promised land across the perilous Sahara Desert and Mediterranean Sea just to get to Europe and escape the hard loife back home for a better one abroad.

To counter this trend, Ebbi and her team at The Etiquette Place launched the iFinesse Project, with the goal of restoring the value system and national pride in Nigeria. As part of the initiative, she authored My Little Book of Etiquette, a reader-friendly and pictorial guidebook that has become the official resource of the campaign for national rebirth. The project, inspired by a senior executive from Glaxo SmithKline who attended a previous Best Foot Programme at Sheraton, is being implemented in partnership with the Lagos State Government and is supported by corporate sponsors including the Lagos Internal Revenue Service (LIRS).

The iFinesse Project has begun distributing free copies of My Little Book of Etiquette and organising etiquette training sessions in public primary schools across Lagos. The goal is to distribute one million copies of the book to public school pupils, students, and teachers, thereby equipping them with the right attitude for life. Ebbi stated that the iFinesse Inauguration ceremony would serve as a call to action for stakeholders and corporate bodies to invest in the initiative.

“It is a well-known fact that a bad attitude is like a flat tyre,” she said. “You cannot go anywhere until you change it,” affirming that The Etiquette Place is commited to changing the attitude narrative in Nigeria—from the classroom to the boardroom.

Ebbi is therefore seeking collaborators, partnerships, sponsorships, public awareness, stakeholders’ support for the iFinesse Project, according to her, “beginning with Lagos State and other states in Nigeria, to help expose children to good manners, make them better persons, to be courteous and to be kind. The aim is to build a culture of empathy among young ones in churches, schools and their environments,” and help rewrite the negative narrative about the country both within and outside.

Yvonne Ebbi