FG replies Peter Obi, denies correlation between Harvard Business School, Nigeria’s image
The federal government has debunked claims that Nigerians were not selected to the Harvard Business School because of the country’s negative image.
This was stated in a post on X by Senior Special Assistant to President Tinubu on Public Engagement, Fredrick Nwabufo.
The presidential aide replied to a series of tweets by former Anambra governor Peter Obi, who asserted that no Nigerians were selected for the Harvard Business School class of 2025 due to the country’s negative image.
Obi further argued that this perception led the institution to choose candidates from Kenya, Rwanda, Morocco, and Ghana, excluding Nigeria.
In his response, Nwabufo said there was no correlation between Harvard Business School’s prerogative of selection in its Field Global Immersion course and Nigeria’s image.
He went on to quote the institution on its selection process to prove that the selection had nothing to do with Nigeria’s image.
He said: “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.”
