Universities will reopen soon

 

Universities are set to reopen soon according to the information gotten from Chukwuemeka Nwajiuba, the Minister of State for Education.

Mr Nwajiuba said that tertiary institutions which were shut in the wake of the novel coronavirus pandemic in March, will reopen “very soon”.

He said that the federal government is also working to end the ongoing strike embarked by ASUU.

“Tertiary institutions across the country will open very soon.

Private universities have written to us, requesting that they are allowed to reopen ahead of public institutions.

Vice-chancellors have also requested that we allow them to reopen for their students in exit classes.

We have also a lot of calls from bodies who want us to resolve the industrial action embarked upon by the Academic Staff Union of Universities before reopening because some public schools which are not ASUU-prone want to take the advantage of the strike to move ahead, but that would destroy our public schools. So, we are working on all these calls.”

The minister added that NUC will carry out an appraisal of the state of tertiary institutions ahead of the reopening.

“We are waiting for the same from other tertiary institutions bodies so I can situate them and present to the PTF on COVID-19.

I can’t give the NUC a deadline on this because our job at the ministry is to wait for their inputs.

This is not a political decision alone. If you open the university system, you have opened the country.”

Nwajiuba appealed to ASUU to call off their strike because their grievances “have more or less been resolved.”