Harvard Business School: Presidency Counters Peter Obi’s Claims On Nigeria’s Reputation

The presidency has countered the remarks of the Labour Party (LP) presidential candidate in the 2023 election, Peter Obi, on the omission of Nigeria from the Harvard Business School class of 2025.

News Telly reported that Nigeria was omitted from the Harvard Business School class of 2025 program, which selected sixteen countries for its global immersion course.

Speaking on the development, the former Anambra governor lamented that the country’s reputation and attractiveness to international institutions and investors have recently been severely impacted by major obvious drawbacks.

Obi stated this on Wednesday via his X handle.

He said the omission of Nigeria, despite the program leader being a Nigerian professor, is particularly striking given the country’s potential and capabilities.

In response, Senior Special Assistant to the President on Public Engagement, Fredrick Nwabufo, in a post via X, stated that there was no correlation between the Harvard Business School’s prerogative of selection in its Field Global Immersion course and Nigeria’s image.

He further referenced the institution’s publication regarding the selection of countries for the course.

Nwabufo wrote, “Good morning, Sir. There is simply no correlation between Harvard Business School’s prerogative of selection in its Field Global Immersion course and Nigeria’s image.

“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.”