The Nigerian Presidency has responded to accusations made by Peter Obi, the Labour Party presidential candidate, regarding Nigeria’s global image. Obi had criticized the country’s exclusion from Harvard Business School’s global immersion course for its class of 2025, suggesting it was a sign of Nigeria’s declining reputation.
Obi highlighted that the Harvard Business School program, which selected 16 countries for its global immersion course, did not include Nigeria.
He further noted that four African countries were chosen instead: Kenya, Rwanda, Morocco, and Ghana. According to Obi, the program aims to teach students leadership, teamwork, and cross-cultural understanding by immersing them in different countries and cultures. He mentioned that students preferred Nairobi, Kenya, and were assigned to various Kenyan companies to address real-world problems.
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.”
In response, the Presidency dismissed Obi’s claims, arguing that there is no connection between Nigeria’s image and the selection process of Harvard Business School. Frederick Nwabufo, Senior Special Assistant on Public Engagement to President Tinubu, explained on social media that the selection process is based on an algorithm ensuring 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.’ ”