Nigeria’s Federal Ministry of Education has forwarded a detailed proposal to the National Assembly on its plan for resumption of schools across Nigeria.
This was disclosed on Tuesday by the Minister of State for Education, Mr. Chukwuemeka Nwajiuba when he met with the Senate Committee on Basic and Secondary Education.
Nwajiuba appeared before the upper legislative chamber to enlightened them on modalities put into place by the education ministry for the reopening of schools which had been closed since the coronavirus induced national lockdown.
He declined giving details of the proposal, citing misconception by members of the public. He said the proposal might be taken as guidelines for school reopening.
He said, “Children are asymptomatic carriers. Nobody can prove whether they can infect each other. Not even the health experts. Everything we know about it is what we read. There is nothing we discovered on our own.
“In the document we have provided, we have suggested how we can move our education sector forward in this pandemic period.
“We don’t want to make it (proposal) known at this period so that some people will not take our proposal for the guidelines for schools reopening.
“The documents were presented to you so that you can criticise and make inputs as major stakeholders”
Nwajiuba expressed reservations over the reopening of primary and secondary schools by the Oyo State Government not minding the increasing cases of coronavirus infections in the state.
He said, “Why is Oyo State talking of reopening schools when it has just started recording an increase in cases of coronavirus infection?
“Just beside Oyo is Ogun State which was part of the three states under the FG’s lockdown since April and it’s not talking about schools reopening.
“As we speak, Kogi and Cross River states are not on the same page with the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control on the issue of testing while all their neighbouring states are conducting tests.”
Vice chairman of the committee, Senator Akon Eyakenyi, who led the meeting, said academic calendar stands to be tampered and expressed concern that public schools could have more to lose than their counterparts in private schools who have been undertaking virtual learning.