The Federal Government says it has sent its evaluation teams to schools across the country to ascertain the safety of the environment before reopening schools that were closed due to Coronavirus pandemic.
The Minister of State for Education, Chukwuemeka Nwajiuba, made the disclosure on Thursday in Abuja at a meeting of the Presidential Task Force, PTF, on COVID-19 with the Northern Traditional Leaders Committee, NTLC, on National Primary Health.
Mr Nwajiuba said: “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 remodeling 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 remodeled if there are no enough classrooms for social distancing,
“We can do tier system, some can come in the morning, may be the junior classes and the senior classes can come in the afternoon.
“We are also working out guidelines such as washing of hands because 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.
“But that showed that these places are sources of spread,” he said.
NAN
