Mr Chukwuemeka Nwajiuba, Nigeria’s Minister of State for Education, has said that the Federal Government has started serious consideration for the full reopening of schools in the country. The minister spoke at the briefing of the Presidential Task Force on COVID-19 on Monday in Abuja.
Although he did not mention the date when schools would resume, he urged protesting students to “be patient with the federal government”. According to him, the government had continued to engage stakeholders, some of whom have expressed readiness to resume fully.
He however expressed optimism that the date for resumption was “around the corner,” just as he disclosed that he and the Minister of Education, Mr Adamu Adamu, met some stakeholders in tertiary education on Monday on the same issue. Nwajiuba said about 78 privately-owned universities were insisting that they were ready for resumption while the response from government-owned universities was still “50-50.”
He said that after aggregating opinions, he would return to the PTF to review the situation and then go ahead to make a pronouncement. “I urge our students who have actually exercised a lot of patience along with their parents … I urge you to bear with us a little bit more. The rioting needs to stop; there is nothing to riot about. “We don’t want to bandy around dates,” he said, “We remain positive,” he added.
It would be recalled that secondary and tertiary institutions in Nigeria were closed due to the rising cases of the dreaded coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic on March 19, 2020.
