Deputy Chairman, Alliance for Survival of COVID-19 and Beyond, (ASCAB), Sina Odugbemi, says it is safer for students to remain at home to minimize the risk of spreading COVID-19.
While admitting that by remaining at home, the students are losing time, he believes that the risk of sending them back to school, by far, outweighs that of staying at home.
He also believes that the Federal Government has not done enough in terms of setting up facility to curb the spread of the virus.
According to him, if the students must return, parents and other stakeholders should first visit the institutions to determine if they have the right set up for resumption.
“There is also this argument that keeping them at home does not give them 100% protection but it minimizes the danger than throwing them to an area where only God knows what is going on,” Odugbemi said on Channels Television’s Politics Today.
His comments come against the backdrop of the scheduled January 18 resumption of schools across the country.
However, with the fast-rising second wave of the virus, the Federal Government says it is reviewing the date.
The Minister of Education, Adamu Adamu, stated this on Monday at the resumed briefing of the Presidential Task Force (PTF) on COVID-19 in Abuja.
This comes few weeks after the Academic Staff Union of University (ASUU) ‘conditionally’ suspended its strike, ending a protracted industrial action that started in March.
On Tuesday, the leadership of the union insisted that Nigerian universities are not ready to re-open.