Schools to remain closed in southern Kaduna until security improves, says government

The Kaduna State government has disclosed that the closure of some schools in southern Kaduna will continue until the security situation improves.The Commissioner for Education and Technology, Prof. Andrew Nok, his counterpart in the Health Ministry, Dr. Paul Manyan Dogo and the governor’s Senior Special Assistant Samuel Aruwan disclosed this yesterday.

They said: “The state government has no plan to relocate the university, nursing school and the college of education.”The officials, who addressed a press conference on behalf of Governor Nasir El-Rufai, explained that the threat to peace in the area necessitated the closure of the institutions.

They made the clarification, following the protest by some of the affected students against the action.Nok explained: “I have earlier explained the reason the Kaduna State University (KASU), Kafanchan campus of the College of Education, Gidan Waya and the College of Midwifery were closed down.

“This was strictly on account of the security concerns and we have not received any clearance yet from the security committee that we should reopen the affected institutions.”

He further disclosed that the need to move some of the students to the main campus in Kaduna was because of government’s desire not to disrupt the schools’ academic calendar.

“We are making frantic effort to have these institutions reopened after all security issues had been attended to.“The construction work at the Kafanchan campus of the university is presently ongoing and I visited the area to launch the distribution of text books at the government secondary school. The primary school attached to the college of education, Gidan Waya has also taken off,” he said.

The commissioner for health added: “There were no plans whatsoever to move the college of nursing and midwifery out of Kafanchan to another place. “In May this year, they conducted what is called hospital finals for nursing students to prepare them for their national final examination in September. Last week, the examination for the preliminary training of students was also concluded to allow us to index them,” he said.