Are universities keeping students safe during COVID?

Premium Times 27 March 2021

Ten months after they were forced to go home in March 2020 by the COVID-19 pandemic and a strike by their teachers, the close to two million students of Nigeria’s 170 universities started getting notices from the federal government to return to their campuses by 18 January. The immediate challenge, however, was whether the tertiary institutions had the capacity, in terms of personnel and facilities, to meet the COVID-19 prevention needs of the burgeoning population of students, reports Dubawa for Premium Times.

Dubawa visited some of these institutions to ascertain their level of compliance with COVID-19 preventive measures, such as regular hand washing, temperature checks, physical distancing and the wearing of facemasks, as advised by the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control.

Although students were compelled by university security staff to wear facemasks at the entrance gate of the Yelwa Campus of the Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University, Dubawa observed that most of them take off their masks as soon as they are within the campus. There were no temperature checks or hand washing facilities at the gate, hostels or anywhere else on the campus. Furthermore, some classes visited were filled up with no adherence to the social distancing guidelines. The situation was similar at the Federal University Kashere, Gombe State University and others.
Full report on the Premium Times site

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