Private Universities Speak on School Resumption

Vice-Chancellors and Registrars of Private Universities have resolved for non-government owned universities to to resume school activities.

This was disclosed by the the Chairman of the body, Prof. Timothy Olagbemiro in an interview with PUNCH.

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According to Olagbemiro, private universities have big campuses with small population which would provide adequate room for social distancing.

Olagbemiro explained that the resumption would be done in phases, while stating the need for university laboratories opened for researches purposes.

“Once we are given the green light, we will put everything needed in place. We have big campuses with small population. We don’t want to resume fully, we want to do it in phases whereby the year one and graduating students can resume to take their final exams after which the year two and three will follow suit.

“We need the universities to open their laboratories so we can do researches in them. You can’t close universities and say you want to do research.”

He stated the necessity to take cognizance of the COVID-19 while he noted that Nigerians needed to learn to live with it.

Olagbemiro further appealed to the NUC to consider their request to reopen schools.

“It is important that we are careful because of COVID-19; of course, it will stay with us for a long time but we have to provide screening, face mask, sanitisers, temperature checker and the likes for our staff and students,” Olagbemiro said.

“We have written to NUC, they should look in to our request and see if it is visible for us to open our universities. We are also job providers and we need to pay salaries,” Olagbemiro said.