The presidency has refuted Peter Obi’s remarks on Nigeria’s exclusion from Harvard Business School’s class of 2025.
Obi, the Labour Party’s presidential candidate, had lamented that Nigeria’s reputation and attractiveness to international institutions and investors have suffered due to recent setbacks.
However, Senior Special Assistant to the President on Public Engagement, Fredrick Nwabufo, countered that there was no evidence to support Obi’s claims.
Nwabufo stated that the program’s selection criteria were not based on a country’s reputation or attractiveness, but rather on specific requirements and qualifications.
Nigeria’s omission from the program, despite a Nigerian professor leading it, had sparked concerns.
However, the presidency has downplayed Obi’s assertions, suggesting that the exclusion was not a reflection of Nigeria’s reputation or potential.
“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,” Nwabufo wrote.
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