The Federal Government is considering reverting to having morning and afternoon classes as it moves to reopen schools amid the COVID-19 lockdown.
The Minister of State for Education, Emeka Nwajiuba, who revealed this on Wednesday during a briefing by the Presidential Task Force on COVID-19 in Abuja, also refuted the report that schools are scheduled to open on June 8.
Nwajiuba said: “Until we are sure these children can go to school, return safely and not bring up with them COVID-19 and infect people who are more susceptible than they are, then we are running a huge risk and God forbid, in our hurry, something happens to our children, I am not sure how anybody will be able to retrieve what has been lost.
“We are going to publish a specification on what we expect COVID-19 or post-COVID-19 reopening to look like.
“We are not talking about coping with COVID-19, but in spite of COVID-19, we expect that we will adapt.
“For a country that has over 115,000 primary schools, you will understand that 35,000 of these who are private must agree to set up the same standard in other to allow children to go in.
“We may have classes in the morning and classes in the afternoon so that we will have the whole of the infrastructure divided provided they can serve us.
“I am not sure we will have classes at night.
“But we can do with morning and afternoon for now.”
