Harvard Business School: Presidency Hits Back at Peter Obi’s Claim of Nigeria’s Dwindling Image

The Nigerian Presidency has refuted claims made by Labour Party presidential candidate Peter Obi that Nigeria’s global image is dwindling.

Obi had stated that Nigeria’s exclusion from Harvard Business School’s global immersion course for its class of 2025 was evidence of the country’s diminishing reputation.

He said, “Nigeria’s negative image was on display as Harvard Business School class of 2025 program has selected 16 countries for its global immersion course, but notably excluded Nigeria, despite the program leader being a Nigerian professor.

“Instead, Kenya, Rwanda, Morocco, and Ghana were chosen as the four African focus countries for this initiative. This program aims to teach students leadership, teamwork, and cross-cultural understanding by immersing them in different continents, cultures, and areas.

“The students have chosen Nairobi, Kenya as their first preference and have been attached to various Kenyan companies to study and present solutions to real-world problems. This omission of Nigeria is particularly striking given the country’s potential and capabilities.

“Unfortunately, Nigeria’s reputation and attractiveness to international institutions and investors has recently been severely impacted by major obvious drawbacks.”

However, the Presidency has dismissed Obi’s claims, stating that there is no correlation between the school’s selection process and Nigeria’s image.

In a statement on social media, Senior Special Assistant on Public Engagement to President Tinubu, Frederick Nwabufo, explained that the selection of countries for the course is based on an algorithm that ensures diversity of gender and citizenship.

Nwabufo added, “This is what the institution says on its blog as regards the selection of countries for the course.

“ ‘The FIELD Global Immersion (FGI) is a semester-long first-year (RC) MBA course. The course is a capstone of sorts, and it requires students to build on learnings from their first-year courses and apply them to real-world business problems. At the beginning of the semester students are paired with a Global Partner (GP) company in one of 16 cities that has a product or service challenge they would like the team to address with their local consumers.

“ ‘At the beginning of the fall semester, students are given the opportunity to rank that year’s Immersion locations to which they would most like to travel. As the MBA population is very diverse (and often includes seasoned travelers) students are also given the opportunity to exclude locations to which they do not wish to travel based on where their home country is, and where they have extensive travel or professional experience.

“ ‘With these considerations in mind, country and team assignments (aka: Global Section assignments) are made via an algorithm that ensures diversity of gender and citizenship – much like their RC Sections! Projects are then assigned to teams at random being mindful of potential conflicts of interest.’ ”