The Minister of State for Education, Chukwuemeka Nwajuiba, says that the coronavirus disease does not exist in the country.
The Minister stated this on Sunday when he appeared before the Senate Committee on Basic and Secondary Education over steps needed to be put in place for the reopening of Primary and Secondary Schools in the country.
He said: “In science, we talk about facts. Everything we know about this disease, is imported. In fact, nobody has seen this disease in Nigeria. Anybody who says he has seen it is a joker. As a nation today, we have done 112, 000 tests for a country of 200 million people in a four-month period.
“Children are asymptomatic carriers. Nobody can prove whether they can infect each other. Not even health experts. Everything we know about it is what we read. There is nothing we discovered on our own.
“In the document we have provided, we have suggested how we can move our education sector forward in this pandemic period. We don’t want to make it known at this period so that some people will not take our proposal for guidelines for schools reopening.
“This is because people publish fake guidelines every day which I always come on air to debunk. What we have now is a proposal. Even if the Senate has not called us, we would have come to you to discuss with you because we have already discussed with the House of Representatives.
“The documents were presented to you so that you can criticise and make inputs as major stakeholders,” he added.
Despite his claims that COVID-19 does not exist in the country, Mr Nwajuiba berated the Oyo state government for planning to reopen schools amid the increasing numbers of COVID-19 cases reported in the state of recent.
“Why is Oyo State talking of reopening schools when it has just started recording increase cases of coronavirus infection. Just beside Oyo is Ogun State which was part of the three states under the federal government’s lockdown since April is not talking about schools reopening.
“That’s part of the country’s problem, education is on the concurrent list, so every state taxes decisions that pleases it on it.
“Also everybody is a big man. When you call them on phone, they will not answer you. “As we speak, Kogi and Cross River States are not on the same page with the National Centre for Disease Control on the issue of testing while all their neighbouring states are conducting tests,” he said.
