The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), Bauchi Zone, insists the country is not prepared for the reopening of schools, warning that “it will be very disastrous.”
“It is now clear to everybody that neither the struggle of ASUU nor COVID-19 protocols agree with the reopening of universities now,” the Zonal Coordinator of the union, Professor Lawan Abubakar said during a press conference at the University of Jos on Tuesday.
“We must avert this impending disaster because it will be very disastrous if we go ahead and open universities with the way we are now.”
Professor Lawan claimed that with the lackadaisical attitude of the government towards the funding of public universities, adherence to COVID-19 guidelines will be a long battle.
With the way the government is handling issues of funding universities, it will take us ten years from now before [the] government will put the necessary facilities to comply with the COVID-19 protocols,” he added, claiming that the government “believes that the solution to COVID-19 pandemic does not exist in our universities.”
Lawan argued that the pandemic would not have caught the education system off guard if the Federal Government had followed through with several Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) it signed with the Nigerian lecturers.
“We wouldn’t be contemplating reopening of the universities now that the COVID-19 data is declining because we would have had enough classrooms, laboratories, workshop studios, hostel facilities to carter for social distancing,” Professor Lawan lamented.
‘Undue Advantage’
The ASUU Zonal Coordinator also has the interest of parents and students at heart and does not want a situation where some universities will take undue advantage of them if schools are reopened.
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