With so much dilly dally about resumption, the Federal Government yet again confirmed on Thursday that it not convinced that schools should be re-opened for academic exercise after their closure due to COVID-19 pandemic.
Responding to a question from Sultan of Sokoto, Sa’ad Abubakar, on school reopening, Minister of State for Education Chukwuemeka Nwajiuba said the Federal Government is still evaluating the situation.
“At the moment, we have not come to the point where we can say we are convinced that schools can manage themselves and reopen comfortably.
“Our teams have gone out and we will use the whole of this week and next week to do a proper evaluation.
“We are going round to see the level of compliance but most importantly, we are waiting to get an update on all the facilities in every part of Nigeria:
“So, it is a work in progress,” he said.
The minister said the government strongly believed in the opinions of experts that 15 per cent of transmission of the pandemic is from school environment and that was why they proposed remodelling of classes.
“We believe the experts that the school system is a suspect place for transmission and that is why we are working with them, particularly on guidelines.
“We are suggesting that classes be remodelled if there are no enough classrooms for social distancing,
“We can do tier system, some can come in the morning, maybe the junior classes and the senior classes can come in the afternoon.
“We are also working out guidelines such as the washing of hands because the school must go on at one point,” he said.
The minister said they experimented the system in the past weeks during the West African School Certificate Examinations and the Joint Admission Matriculation Examination.
“We are lucky thus far because we only recorded an incident in Gombe, where a child contacted COVID-19.
“We quickly isolated him and he recovered in time to join the class back.
The PTF solicited the support of traditional rulers in the prevention of community spread of COVID-19.
The task force said the royal fathers are key to engaging the people to keep safe from the spread of the Mohammed underscored the need for collaboration with the traditional rulers to stop the growing community transmission of the pandemic.