THE Presidential Task Force on COVID-19 has said it won’t hesitate to shut down schools in the country should there be a spike in recorded COVID-19 cases.
“The issue of school reopening is something that the PTF has discussed very extensively. The ministry of education decided to open the schools. Based on our own understanding, it was the states that actually wanted to have the schools reopened,” Mukhtar Muhammed, the PTF national incident manager, stated this in a Twitter video post by the PTF on Monday.
“Now, the PTF is watching this very closely, we are monitoring what is going on and if we find out that cases continue to rise in the country and we start to have incidences in schools, certainly, we will have the schools closed.
“In the first instance, we should have delayed opening of the schools but now that the schools are opened, the PTF will continue to monitor very closely with all the schools to ensure that they institute measures and ensure that people follow as much as possible.”
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In October, Adamu Adamu, Nigerian minister for education, ordered reopening of all schools in the country after they closed in March owing to the outbreak of COVID-19 in the country.
He added that the federal government consulted with all relevant stakeholders in the education sector before arriving at the decision to reopen all schools.
However, the minister warned that schools that fail to adhere strictly to the outlined COVID-19 safety protocols, risk closure if there is an outbreak from such institutions.
According to the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC), Nigeria has recorded over 130,00 COVID-19 cases and over 1,600 fatalities since it reported its index case in February 2020.
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